


Rewind and Repeat

by b4rd-of-l1f3 (knight0fd00m)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Alternia, Canon-Typical Violence, I really can't think of good tags for this honestly, In which Karkat has to man the fuck up and save everyone, It's homestuck there's always swearing, Karkat Swearing, Multi, Nightmares, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Prophecy, Swearing, The Sufferer's Story, Violence, oh yeah there's swearing too
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2017-03-11
Packaged: 2018-05-20 10:38:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 17
Words: 34,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6002731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knight0fd00m/pseuds/b4rd-of-l1f3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even though he came before,<br/>now he is here no more<br/>For the low the world is pain,<br/>but soon nothing will ever be the same.<br/>When everything is said and done,<br/>In the night The Redeemer will come.</p><p>--------</p><p>Karkat Vantas has been trying to live under the radar his entire life to avoid being culled on the spot, but when faced with death, disappearance, and a bunch of prophetic nonsense from multiple sources he must step out of the shadows to take on more than he ever bargained for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> HELLO FRIENDS!  
> I have a new story in progress for you guys, and I'm really excited about it, I hope you guys enjoy!

====> Be Karkat Vantas

 

I tried to avoid large crowds of higbloods, but I was making an exception tonight.

I weaved through the thick fray of trolls going about their business in the marketplace. It was a poorer section of Mutationis, which was saying something since it was still a lot nicer than any lowblood marketplace I’ve ever been to, with walls covered in mosaics depicting Alternian history lined up behind the market stalls and old gas lamps stung between the buildings and stalls. The moons were obstructed by clouds, so the lamps provided the only lighting.

There was a particular merchant that I was looking for. I heard from some of the younger trolls that hadn’t quite learned to keep their voices down in the marketplace closer to my hive that she sold good quality weapons to lowbloods and hung a green lantern at her market stall. My sickles were dull and starting to rust, so I was in desperate need of new ones that weren’t going to go to waste within a few perigees. I wasn’t stupid enough to leave my hive without them.

A tall ceruleanblood shoved past me and managed to upset my balance enough for me to stumbled into a tealblood, who promptly shoved me aside and yelled, “Watch it rustblood!” I clenched my jaw, I wanted to tear her a new one but I was in a crowd of bluebloods and I didn’t have a death wish. Plenty of them were already giving me stares before this, and now the best I could do was keep my head down and keep moving.

I heard a few whispers from trolls as I moved past, asking each other why there was lowblooded scum in a place like this. A few wondered if I was a l slave, and a few others taunted me, telling me that I needed to get out of here and go back to my lusus. I was nine sweeps old damnit, I didn’t have a lusus anymore. Not that they cared, they just wanted to make it known that they thought themselves better than I was because they were higher in the hemospectrum than me.

I am notoriously bad at keeping my opinions to myself, and for doing acrobatics off the metaphorical handle at the drop of a hat, but in public I knew better. I knew better than to draw too much attention to myself.

Dying wasn’t on my list of things to do today.

That’s how life was, if you had blood warmer than your average tealblood you had to tread lightly, and if you were warmer than your average yellowblood you better keep yourself out of the line of sight of any highblood that might be in a bad mood, and if you were to end up in their line of sight, be more polite than you ever want to be toward the high and mighty sacks of musclebeast shit with chilled blood coursing through their veins.

If you weren’t, you’d probably be culled on sight. If you do something disrespectful to a highblood on a good day, you’d be lucky if you walked out broken and bleeding. They were ruthless and power hungry, and they didn’t care who they stepped on to keep their power. I’m told that ceruleanbloods and colder have their own style of backstabbing and power grabbing, but they all agreed that anyone with warmer blood and a shorter natural lifespan is worse than nothing.

I round a corner into another section of the marketplace and see a stall with the faint green lantern in the corner. I ducked and wove around the taller trolls toward where the silver glint of metal was reflecting off the low light of the gas lanterns. There was only the green one and another blue one under the faded teal canopy that draped over wooden supports to protect patrons and the weapons from the elements, but it didn’t do much for the cold wind that was currently blowing my cloak all over the goddamn place. It was annoying, the hood flapping to the side and hitting me in the face. At this rate I was going to break a tooth and damn myself to an early grave from the blood that would gush from my mouth.

I managed to get to the stall without shattering a tooth or three, and ducked between two tealbloods to get to where the the sickles were on display. I looked at an especially ornate set and wished for a moment that I had more caegars to spend besides the meager amount I had managed to save over the last half a sweep.

Thankfully I wasn’t a slave, I was but a simple troll who did critiques of various movies and novels. I barely survived off that, but it was something. I managed to save a few caegars after my lusus left and I didn’t have to worry about feeding it anymore, but not a whole lot. I sometimes entertained the thought of becoming a Threshecutioner, an elite sickle-wielding soldier that patrolled Alternia to keep everyone, highbloods and low, in line. They were the most lethal soldiers in the known universe, and I aspired to be one for the longest time. By my seventh sweep, I realized how foolish the notion was. Past me was an naive, ignorant wriggler.

I looked over at another pair, plain silver with a solid, black leather wrapped handle. I had been meaning to learn how to use two sickles in combat, so it might be a good time to invest in two. These ones looked pretty good quality compared to what I was used to, with a strong curve and visibly sharp. They looked sturdy and strong, like they didn’t run the risk of breaking in the middle of a strife.

“Looking for anything in particular?” I looked up to see an oliveblood with rounded, somewhat taller horns and her hair pulled back in a ponytail. She wore a worker’s smock with a leather apron that had her symbol in the middle of her chest. It was jagged and sharp unlike her horns. Her olive eyes glinted in the moonlight, sending a pang of anxiety through me. She couldn’t be more than a sweep or two older than me and her eyes betrayed her blood color.

“A new sickle,” I mumbled, still looking at the pair in front of me partially wishing I could pick them up and look them over. “Or two, depending on cost.”

She smiled, her fangs poking out from behind her top lip, “The pair you’re looking at right now are some of my lower quality ones, but they are a lot better than you would find elsewhere for the price.”

I nodded and she pulled one out of the case, turning it over a few times so I could see it. She offered me it, “Go ahead and test the weight, see if it’s what you’re looking for.”

I stared at her in surprise for a moment before taking it from her. I didn’t think she would actually let me handle it, most merchants wouldn’t let you handle their weapons until you bought it in case you just kill them and steal everything they had.

It was a medium weight, light enough to move easily but heavy enough that it would do some decent damage. It was sturdy as well. I turned it over in my hand, inspecting it, before looking up to her and handing it back, “How much for both of them?”

“150 caegars each, pretty good compared to a lot of other merchants,” she said, smiling.

She was right too.

Luckily I had brought 350 caegars. I pulled the 300 out of my pocket and gave them to her with a slight smile. I managed to get some pretty good quality sickles with the meager amount I managed to save.

She slid them into sheathes and handed them to me, “Thank you for your business, hopefully you’ll be a little safer now.”

I nodded, “Thank you.” I turned to leave but she tapped my shoulder, stretched over the display cases, and hissed, “Be careful burgundyblood, the bluebloods have been antsy the last week and I’ve found at least two dead lowbloods in the alleyways.”

I nodded, “Thanks for the warning.”

She nodded and straightened up as I turned and left, ducking through the crowd again. I fastened the sickles to my belt as I walked.

I had heard a few rumors that the bluebloods here had been pissy over some territorial aristocracy turf war over slaves and been taking it out on the local lowblood population. No idea why, didn’t care either, I just wanted to make it back to my hive without dying.

I managed to get out of the marketplace and onto one of the side pathways, taking sort of a back way out of the settlement. It was probably dangerous, especially after the merchant’s warning, but it was one of the fastest ways out of there and I wanted to get the hell out of this settlement. I turned to cut down the only alleyway I was going to take and stopped dead in my tracks.

Farther down, but still fairly close, a blueblood was punching a yellowblood that he had pinned against the wall across the jaw. I heard the snap of his jaw breaking from here.

I stood, frozen, as the another ceruleanblood got up from where he was sitting on top of a crate, laughed cruelly, and kicked the yellowblood in the knee, breaking it. The blueblood dropped him, causing the poor troll to cry out. He tried to drag himself away, but got kicked in the ribs by the blueblood instead. Another set of crushed bones.

The yellowblood was crawling toward my direction, so I took a step back, and then another. The last thing I needed was to get into a strife, especially with these bloodthirsty bluebloods.

He looked up at me desperately, his tormentors laughing in the background, and reached toward me. My eyes widened and I took a few more steps back as the ceruleanblood kicked the poor yellowblood in the temple, killing him. Before the bluebloods could look up I bolted down the pathway along the building away from the alleyway. I ran and ran and ran down pathway after pathway, shoving trolls aside as I ran and weaving through thicker crowds like water until I reached the outskirts of the settlement. I slowed down from running full tilt to pacing myself a little better, knowing that I couldn’t wear myself out to my face turning the color of my blood, and so my lungs would stop threatening to burst.

It was at least four miles to my hive, but I didn’t stop running. I looked behind me a few times to make sure I wasn’t being pursued. A lowblood running away from a marketplace was sketchy enough, but no one was behind me. My paranoia was kicking me in the ass that someone would start coming after me at any time so I kept running.

I almost tripped over my cloak at least three times, ripping more off the ends, and my feet screamed from the running but I didn’t stop. I didn’t stop until I all but ripped the front door of my hive off the hinges rushed inside, and slammed it shut. I slammed my back against the door to shut it, and wheezed, trying to remember how to breathe.

Thing is, that’s what happens to lowbloods every day. They could take a shortcut through an alley and get beaten and killed, or witness another getting beaten or killed.

Sometimes you walk out the front door and see a neighbor being dragged out of their hive and culled either by highbloods or even worse, the Imperial Drones. I didn’t even want to think about the Imperial Drones, cause when it came down to it if I didn’t get killed by the highbloods I would get killed by the drones.

My breathing started to slow after several long minutes of existential dread about my future death. I will be culled eventually, it was only a matter of time. I was lucky that I had made it to nine sweeps, that’s more than a lot of trolls. Hell, I was lucky I made it out of the brooding caverns.

I slammed my head back against the door out of frustration before stopping and cursing at myself for being an _idiot_ because if I were to hurt myself enough to draw blood, hell to even bruise anywhere, including hidden in my own hair, I would be dying a lot faster than I would be at this rate.

Dying wasn’t really in my plans right now, but I didn’t know what I was going to do to avoid dying either.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YEAH FORMATTING

There was still a little bit of light filtering in through the corners of the blackout curtains when I woke up, which means it was way too fucking early to be conscious.

I tried to go back to sleep, be after an hour of fitfully turning around in the sopor I growled and sat upright, poking my head out of the slime. My respiteblock was colder than the sopor, but that was to be expected. I kept my sopor pretty warm by lowblood standards, seeing as my body heat was warmer than your average lowblood I needed the warmer sopor to stay warm while sleeping. Cold sopor was the worst thing to have ever existed.

I dragged myself into the ablution trap and stood under the water for at least an hour, longer than normal. My head kept going back to the yellowblood in the alley.

He saw me, I was the last thing he saw before he died. He looked to me for help, but there was nothing I could do.

Nothing.

I scrubbed the sopor out of my hair, trying to clear my head. I don’t know why this kept bothering me, this sort of thing happens all the time on Alternia.

Maybe it’s because I had never seen that before with my own ganderbulbs.

Maybe it’s because that could very easily happen to me.

I sighed and dragged myself to the mealblock to try and heat up some grubsteak from a few nights ago. I didn’t eat after I got home last night so my meal sac was trying to eat itself at this point. I think that anxiety might have had something do with my churning stomach also, but whatever I guess.

After successfully making coffee and food I went back upstairs to my respiteblock and sat in front of my husktop. I pulled up the coding program that I have, the very one Sollux told me was a piece of shit just about every time I mention its existence, and pulled up the virus that I had been working on.

Sollux taught me the basics of how to code sweeps ago before telling me to figure the rest out myself cause it wasn’t that hard, the lying, bifurcated bulgesucker. It was not as easy as he said it was.

So sweeps later, here I am, trying to figure out how to make this virus do what I wanted it to do. A few hours past, but I got basically nothing done. I kept thinking back to the yellowblood in the alley.

It’s like my thinkpan was stuck on rewinding and repeating every detail. The crack of his bones, the splatter of yellow colored blood hitting the dusty ground and the brick wall behind him, it all echoed and played behind his eyes like it kept happening over and over again. I felt anxiety twisting in my stomach and I didn’t even know why. It didn’t happen to me, and there was nothing I could do, but I didn’t even try to stop it either. If I did try to stop it, I would have died too.

I ran my tongue over my fangs, which were pretty blunt by troll standards, and paused in my coding to see that I did an entire section wrong in my distracted thoughts and growled at myself, irritated. I went to drink more of my coffee only to find the mug empty.

I went downstairs and heated up some more and walked back upstairs to find Trollian pinging at me in quick succession.

“Alright, alright you impatient grubsucker I’m coming,” I groaned. I dropped myself into the chair, minimized the coding program, and opened Trollian. It was Terezi.

 

—gallowsCalibrator began trolling carcinoGeneticist—

 

GC: K4RK4T!!

GC: K4RK4T YOU N33D TO 4NSW3R M3 R1GHT NOW!!

GC: TH1S 1S 1MPORT4NT!!

GC: TH1S 4 M4TT3R OF L1F3 OR D34TH 4ND YOU N33D TO 4NSW3R M3

GC: K4RK4T!!

GC: DO NOT M4K3 M3 G3T VR1SK4 1NVOLV3D B3C4US3 YOU KNOW 1 W1LL

GC: 1 S3R1OUSLY N33D YOU TO M3SS4G3 M3 B4CK

GC: YOU KNOW 1M NOT TH3 TYP3 TO B3G BUT TH1S 1S V1T4L

CG: WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS SO VITALLY IMPORTANT THAT YOU FELT THE NEED TO SPAM AT ME?

CG: I AM OH SO CURIOUS NOW TEREZI.

CG: WHAT COULD BE SO IMPORTANT THAT TEREZI PYROPE HERSELF WOULD BEG ME?

GC: SHUT TH3 FUCK UP FOR 4 S3COND!!

GC: YOU DONT UND3RST4ND

GC: 1 4M H3R3 W1TH 4 W4RN1NG

GC: D3P3ND1NG ON TH3 CHO1C3S YOU M4K3

GC: YOU W1LL 31TH3R DOOM 4LL OF US

GC: OR YOU W1LL S4V3 US 4LL

 

—gallowsCalibrator ceased trolling carcinoGeneticist—

 

CG: TEREZI WHAT THE FUCK?

 

I sat there and stared at my screen. What the fuck was she talking about?

And why did it make all the blood in my body run cold as I read it?

I shook my head vigorously to try and clear it and closed the window. She decides to furiously get my attention, tell me some weird cryptic horsebeastshit, and then leave right away? What the fuck?

I got up and stormed outside, pulling at my hair. I exhaled slowly through my teeth and walked over to the railing on the balcony. Below, trolls walked along the paths that wound around the lawnrings going about their business. Some carried satchels with food in them, others just hurried by in cloaks with or without their hood up. There were two trolls, a burgundyblood that lived a few hives down and an oliveblood that I’ve never seen before, walking past my hive holding hands. Matesprits most likely.

It was about midnight, maybe a little later, so there were plenty of trolls outside. I technically didn’t live in an actual settlement, just a small cluster of hives along one of the main pathways that cut through the part of Alternia. That was a path that was actually paved, unlike the paths in regular hive clusters or in smaller paths in the actual settlements. Regular paths consisted of dirt and gravel, at least where I lived it did. Less traveled paths sometimes still had grass growing on them.

I gripped the railing tight enough that I was sure that the skin was more white than grey, why was I so shaken up about this? It was nonsense and Terezi was probably just fucking with me. She always does.

But not like this.

She was the type to tease and to prod at me to piss me off, which often worked, not give me some cryptic message and disconnect. I know her well enough to know that that’s not like her.

I shook my head again and exhaled. How long was I holding my breath for?

She had to be fucking with me, I wasn’t important enough to change my own circle of idiots that I call friends let alone anything else she was talking about. In the big scheme of things, I was nothing. I was a pariah in a society that would kill me if they had the chance.

Why was this getting to me?

I turned from the balcony and walked back inside, checking over my hands for possible scratches. Luckily, there were none.

I sat back down at my husktop and pulled up Trollian to troll someone about this, but hesitated. I wasn’t close with anyone really. I talked to them sure, but I spent more time rambling and having rage-fits at them. I didn’t talk to anyone about anything really important. I talked to Aradia to complain about how stupid the caste system was because if anyone understood being on the bottom it was her, being a burgundyblood. However, I didn’t talk to her about anything important.

This was important.

I growled at myself, I didn’t even know why it was important. It just felt important, which was stupid cause it was more than likely just Terezi fucking with me.

Right?


	3. Chapter 3

_I stood in the center of the largest square in Mutationis. There were crowds of highbloods around me, coldblooded blues and even colder purples, and there was the yellowblood standing in front of me. He was covered in his own blood, his mouth agape and drooling blood, but when he pointed at me I looked down to see I was only in my grey leggings and was covered in my own blood too._

_Bright, candy red blood dripped from my knuckles onto the mosaic covered ground below me, betraying my mutation for the entire square to see._

_The yellowblood’s arm dropped and he gave a sympathetic smile before crumbling onto the ground, dead._

_I looked up to see rows and rows of trolls stand, and one by one they ran toward me, but I felt an arrow pierce through my back, snapping my spine and-_

 

I woke up screaming from a dream I can’t remember.

 

======

 

There was a marketplace that was closer to my hive cluster that had a price range more suitable to the trolls around here, yellowblood and lower. The merchants were mostly olivebloods, but there were a few yellowbloods too. It was only a hour or so walk there, but I left early. I slept fitfully, having a nightmare some time around noon and not really sleeping after that, so I made a list of groceries I needed to get and set out.

It was a clear night, the moons hanging in the sky with thousands of stars in between, and the wind wasn’t nearly as strong as the other night. It was still cold, as it was still warming up from first winter, so I grit my teeth and kept moving.

Most of the way to this settlement, Principium, cut through a forest and was lined by trees on both sides and under a canopy of leaves during the perigees that weren’t absurdly cold. There were enough leaves to count as an attempt toward a canopy, but it was still too cold for there to be a proper flush of leaves.

There were also enough leaves to block the moons’ light in some places, so light washed the floor in patches, and shadows covered the rest. I probably would have been able to give more of a shit if I wasn’t exhausted and if I cared about aesthetically pleasing environments in the first place.

I kicked the dust on the path as I walked, my gastric sac tied in a knot. Anxiety and paranoia had it’s hold on me, and I spent most of my walk there with a hand on my sickle. I tried practicing with two of them last night, but spent more time looking like an idiot than anything else. I’ll get it, eventually.

I got to Principium and took one of the main roads to get to the marketplace, unlike usual where I just take side roads cause it’s faster, and stop at a corner to dig my list of shit I needed to get out of the satchel I carried for food runs. It wasn’t long seeing as after getting the new sickles I didn’t have much money left, but it had food on it that could last me awhile.

I rounded the corner and started weaving my way around the trolls that were also in the marketplace. They weren’t nearly as tall as the highbloods, but they were still taller than me so it was still annoying trying to find the stalls I needed to go to, especially since I came into the marketplace from a different place than usual.

I dodged rushed trolls and swerved around younger trolls, couldn’t be any older than wrigglers, that were being shoved around in the crowd.

There were always more trolls in the lowblood marketplaces because there was a higher population of lowbloods on this planet than highbloods and they were more likely to band together in settlements than highbloods, who thought they were too good to live near anyone of warm blood. They still had marketplaces and settlements, but those were almost completely populated by highbloods except for the slaves and servants.

I looked down to my list again, which only had grubloaf, coffee, rice, and any sort of meat I could get my claws on on it, and when I looked up to try and see where the hell I was going I ended up walking into someone and whacking my face on their horns.

“What the hell are you doing in the middle of the fucking pathway? Do you want to get knocked over and trampled like a crumpled up piece of cardboard?” I snapped. The troll didn’t move and when I was done rubbing my face I looked up to a familiar set of horns.

It was Aradia.

What the hell was she doing all the way out here?

“Aradia? You don’t live anywhere near this shithole, what are you doing out here?” I asked. She still didn’t move or respond, just stared off into the distance.

“Hello? Alternia to Aradia, is your thinkpan functioning at all?” I crossed my arms over my chest. She was blank faced, slightly pale, and non-responsive.

I waved a hand in front of her face, “Are you going to respond like a normal troll or are you going to stand there like one of those stupid troll porcelain dolls all night?” She still didn’t move.

I sighed, exasperated, “Fine, I’ll talk to you later I guess, if you don’t get trampled by all these unfortunately existing nubsuckers.” I step around her to walk past but suddenly her claws were digging into my shoulder and her head had snapped to stare at me dead in the eyes. All the overheated blood in my body froze when I saw that her eyes were starting to change color to burgundy. If hers is beginning to change, then mine will be soon as well. I’ll have to find some way of concealing them, or I was as good as dead.

She stared at me for a few moments before I snap, “Now you realize I’m here? What the fuck?”

Aradia didn’t respond fore another few moments before speaking in a hollow voice that I didn’t recognize, “You will be the turning point in the tide of our society, and even our race itself. You cannot fail.”

I stared at her. First Terezi’s creepy, cryptic warning and now Aradia’s being cryptic too? My eyes narrowed and my lip turned up in a snarl, “What is with these cryptic message bullshit? First Terezi and now you? Will someone with half a thinkpan tell me what is going on?”

Her face returns to being as still as stone and she said nothing more. Her claws stopped digging into my shoulder and she turned and walked away. She avoided the other trolls with ease, mostly due to the fact that they didn’t appear to be moving. At all.

In fact, the entire marketplace had gone silent since I had walked into her, but I hadn’t processed that until now. The entire marketplace was frozen. At least until she disappeared from view as I stared after her. If I hadn’t known any better I would have thought that time had frozen.

I kept staring until another troll walked into me, yelling, “Watch it!”

I shook my head to clear it and looked at my list again. Between they fact that I was having a hard time figuring out where I was exactly and the weird stillness from Aradia, I was dazed and distracted. I found the first stall and almost bought the wrong kind of grubloaf, shaking my head again and glad I caught it before I actually bought it, and the second took me ages to find but I managed to get the right coffee.

I got to the third stall only to find it wasn’t the right one, this one sold meat from the sea, which was disgusting. I backed into the crowd again and spent another ten minutes trying to find the meat stall that I normally went to.

I managed to buy some cheaper meats and started heading back to my hive. It barely registered to me that it was late in the night until I was walking through the forested trail and it was much darker than it was when I had gone through it the first time. I was more focused on Aradia’s message.

I had no idea what she was talking about. I was an insignificant troll that was likely going to meet his end soon if he couldn’t figure out how to conceal his eyes as they changed color. I wasn’t a turning point for anything, this made about as much sense as Terezi’s warning.

I walked back into my hive, dropped everything in the mealblock, and all but ran up to the ablutionblock. I slammed the door shut behind me and almost literally pressed my face to the reflectionpane. I stared straight into my eyes, looking for any tinge of red that would give me away.

I wasn’t sure if it was my eyes going slightly bloodshot from paranoia, but I noticed a very faint tinge of red around my pupils that would very soon fill my irises and show off the mutant color that pulsed through my veins.

I was really going to need to figure out how to hide that, and quickly. Contacts possibly, if I could find someone who knew how to make them that wouldn’t cull me on sight. I was listed as a burgundyblood in the Imperial records along with every other burgundyblood on this planet, so trying to get contacts that would pass as burgundy would be incredibly suspicious, and there was no way I would be able to trust anyone with this. I was going to have to do this on my own.

But how?

I turned on the water and splashed it all over my face to try and clear my thinkpan, but only succeeded in making me cold. Turning around, I grabbed a towel and dried my face and hair. I stood there with my face in the towel for a moment or two before tossing it over the towel rack and heading back downstairs to the mealblock to put groceries away. I was hungry, but nothing sounded appealing. I stared in the thermal hull for a good five minutes before shutting it and heading upstairs.

My respiteblock had clothes everywhere and a few nutrition plateaus so, groaning, I cleaned. It didn’t get my mind off anything, especially my eyes changing color.

I ran a hand through my hair as I walked up the stairs, stressed. I had a few reviews to do, maybe doing one of those would get my mind off this shit. I grabbed one of the books I had started reading and sat against the wall to read it. This one so far wasn’t the best I had read, but it was alright. The plot was pretty typical, two trolls that started red and flipped black. The main character’s moirail ends up auspisticing and their moirallegiance disintegrates, and the main character’s matesprit/kismesis ends up going pale with her former moirail so naturally the main character flips her shit. I was about three-fourths of the way through it, I could probably finish it tonight if I didn’t get distracted.

I was still distracted, but I managed to focus enough on it to finish it after about an hour. Dawn had to be two hours away minimum, so I figured that I could try to get at least some of the review written.

I tossed the book on my desk and woke up my husktop to find a Trollian window flashing at me. Sollux had decided to troll me, but it appears to have been from a few hours ago.

 

—twinArmageddons began trolling carcinoGeneticist—

 

TA: karkat have you heard anythiing from aa toniight?

TA: 2he'2 deciided two drop off the face of alterniia and ha2n't repliied two me or kn

TA: you talk two her 2ometiime2, diid ii pii22 her off or 2omethiing?

TA: karkat an2wer your damn trolliian we both know you don't get off thii2 2tupiid thiing.

TA: 2he ha2n't trolled me at all 2iince la2t niight, whiich ii2 unu2ual.

TA: 2he'2 fuckiing dii2appeared, have you 2een her?


	4. Chapter 4

I raised an eyebrow at my screen. They talked pretty consistently, which was normal considering they were matesprits, so her not replying to him would be unusual. I had just seen her this evening, but she was acting weird. She was emotionless instead of enthusiastic, and she had been blank faced instead of smiling. Was something wrong?

 

CG: FIRST OF ALL, SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU KNOW I HAVE OTHER SHIT TO DO BESIDES SIT ON TROLLIAN ALL NIGHT.

CG: AS FOR ARADIA, I SAW HER THIS EVENING IN THE PRINCIPIUM MARKETPLACE.

CG: SHE WAS ACTING KIND OF WEIRD, BUT SHE WAS THERE.

CG: I DON’T KNOW WHERE SHE WENT THOUGH.

TA: 2he wa2 actiing weiird?

TA: how wa2 2he actiing weiird?

CG: SHE WASN’T ALL CHEERY AND SHIT.

CG: SHE HAD A COMPLETELY BLANK FACIAL EXPRESSION AND BARELY ACKNOWLEDGED MY EXISTENCE.

CG: I WALKED RIGHT INTO HER SO I HAVE NO IDEA HOW SHE COULDN’T HAVE KNOWN I WAS THERE RIGHT AWAY.

CG: SHE DIDN’T EVEN NOTICE UNTIL I TRIED TO WALK AROUND HER.

CG: SHE WAS ACTING WEIRD AS FUCK, BUT I DON’T KNOW WHY.

TA: 2he wa2 actiing kiind of weiird when ii la2t heard from her two.

TA: 2ayiing all thii2 2trange 2hiit before 2uddenly loggiing off.

TA: ii've had a miigraiine 2iince ii la2t heard from her, ii thiink 2omethiing happened ii ju2t don't know what.

CG: SHE’S PROBABLY FOUND SOME STRANGE RUIN ON ONE OF HER DIGS OR SOME SHIT.

CG: YOU KNOW SHE SPENDS MORE TIME DIGGING THAN ANYTHING ELSE.

TA: ii 2tiill thiink 2omethiing happened, and ii'm goiing two fiind out what.

 

—twinArmageddons ceased trolling carcinoGeneticist—

 

I’m pretty sure everything that was happening lately was strange and it was getting aggravating.

I ran both my hands down my face and stared at the ceiling for a few moments before looking back down to my husktop. I was just going to have to deal with the weirdness because my friends are lunatics anyway, they’re probably just trying to fuck with me or something.

As for finding Aradia, I wondered if Tavros would know anything. They were pretty close, so even though Aradia may not have been talking to Sollux for some reason, maybe she had been talking to Tavros.

 

—carcinoGeneticist began trolling adiosToreador—

 

CG: TAVROS, HAVE YOU HEARD FROM ARADIA AT ALL?

CG: SOLLUX IS LOSING HIS SHIT ALL OVER THE METAPHORICAL PLACE TRYING TO FIND HER.

CG: IF ANYONE ELSE HAD HEARD FROM HER I WOULD THINK IT WOULD BE YOU.

CG: ARE YOU EVEN ONLINE RIGHT NOW?

CG: FOR FUCK’S SAKE, I’LL COME BACK LATER.

 

—carcinoGeneticist ceased trolling adiosToreador—

 

There goes that idea.

I got up and paced around my respiteblock, it was likely that Aradia had gone to do some digging in the middle of nowhere and hadn’t gotten back to Sollux, but there wasn’t much over here ruin-wise and I last saw her here.

I looked around my block and realized that it was a mess, so I started picking laundry off the floor and throwing it into the laundry basket, re-organizing my books and putting them on the shelved reading platform instead of them being all over the floor and my desk, and changing out the sopor in my recouperacoon. All of this took an hour, but it did nothing to clear my thinkpan.

Maybe fresh air would help, who knows.

I walked downstairs, rubbing my head, and grabbed my cloak off the hook without even looking. Putting it on was a pain seeing as I was distracted, but I managed and walked out the front door, pulling the hood up.

It was later in the night, so there weren’t many trolls out. Dawn was still a ways off though, so I had plenty of time to walk around. The temperature wasn’t extremely cold, but it wasn’t exactly warm either. That alone was pretty good at clearing my head.

Why was this even bothering me?

I half wondered if Terezi and Aradia had decided to team up, fuck with me, and then vanish. Though, Aradia probably would have had Sollux in on it for no other reason than that she’d think it was funny.

My friends were insane, this was a long standing proven fact. They used to partake in extremely dangerous FLARP campaigns, and everyone is pretty certain that Vriska would have seriously injured, if not killed, any one of our friends if it wasn’t for Terezi.

This doesn’t include the trolls that she killed to feed her lusus, she had already been doing that before her, Terezi, Aradia, Tavros, and Eridan all started FLARPing.

I didn’t partake for obvious reasons, Equius wouldn’t let Nepeta for her own safety and himself thought it was foolish, Feferi had more important things to worry about, and Kanaya and Sollux didn’t care enough to play.

Vriska’s actions toward Tavros were becoming hostile enough that I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had either killed him or worse if Terezi hadn’t stepped in and became her moirail. They’ve been moirails for at least four sweeps now, and it’s been enough to keep her at least somewhat civil. She still kills trolls for her lusus, but that’s more out of necessity than anything else.

It was around the time that all of their lusii were going to take on new charges, give it a few more perigees and all of the ones remaining with our group would be gone. That is, if Tavros lets go of his finally.

I walked past my hivecluster and into the more wooded area to the south. Most of this part of Alternia had a lot of trees and forests between settlements and hiveclusters, with rivers cutting through them and the occasional mountain. There was a mountain close enough to see on the horizon, but I’ve never been to it. Way too far away for me to walk to in a single night, and I didn’t want to be caught outside during the day. I wasn’t stupid enough to risk being completely fried.

There were various trails in this patch of forest, but I walked on the one that I was most familiar with. It went straight through the forest with a few turns here and there, but it was mostly level so I didn’t run the risk and slipping and ending up even slightly injured.

I kicked at the dust on the trail as I walked, watching it cover the rocks in the ground. I kicked up some grass a few times, chewing on my lip for a moment before internally kicking myself for doing that. I can’t injure myself.

I walked up to a fork in the path and stopped. Normally I took the left trail, which looped back around to the beginning again. My head was still buzzing so I figured that I would do better to take a new trail and see where it leads, maybe focusing on the new terrain would clear my head. I turned to the right and started down that trail.

It had to have been at least a two hours since I left. The sky was darker now, indicating that the moons were on their way down. It would start getting light in an hour or two.

However, the moons were still high enough in the sky to was a clearing up ahead with their light. I walked until I was a few feet from the end of the trees and froze.

There was a tall pillar on the other end of the clearing that appeared to be made with of solid stone. There were faded splatters of red that I could see from over fifty feet away, and the grass around the base was dead.

What caught my eye next was the troll crouched toward the middle of the clearing, not far from the pillar itself. They appeared to be inspecting something if their bowed head and moving left arm said anything. It looked like they were brushing dirt off something, but I couldn’t see what it was. This troll must be feral if the tattered clothes had anything to say about it. Their hair was long, and their horns curved tall with hooks at the end of them both. Based on how tall they were, this troll was probably very old and had cold blood running through their veins.

It was time to get out before the feral troll saw me.

I took a step back, and then another, and on the third step I stepped on a branch and broke it. Figures.

The troll’s head looked up and tensed before turning enough to see where I was standing. Their eyes were a deep cerulean, and they looked at me for a second before relaxing. I, however, was starting to panic. I made a point to avoid the attention of highbloods when I can avoid it, and this one had their attention on me. I was probably starting to look panicked, which was the last thing I would have wanted in this sort of situation.

The troll rose to a standing position and finished turning around. They looked like they hadn’t eaten right in weeks, their features guant and skin too pale for trolls. A fond smile formed on his lips and a clearly male voice spoke, “They always said that he would come to finish his ancestor’s work, and they were right.”

He pointed at the grey symbol on my shirt I crossed my arms over it and I growled, “What are you talking about? Ancestors are a myth.”

His smile grew as he shook his head, turned, and began walking toward the other side of the clearing. He stepped over what he was inspecting, walked around the pillar, and disappeared into the trees. I stared after him, not bothering to pursue him. Instead, I walked to the hunk of metal that was sticking out of the ground where the troll had been a few minutes prior.

I crouched in front of it and took my turn at inspecting it. I froze when I realized that the metal was shaped exactly like the symbol on my shirt. A pair of metal cuffs that were connected by curves coming off each cuff. My head immediately shot up to stare at the pillar, where a rusted chain was now visible hanging from the pillar. I looked back down to the cuffs to see where they had been connected, looked back up, and scrambled to my feet. I needed to get away from here, and I needed to get away now.

I turned and bolted back the way I came, leaping over the rocks in the paths all the way out of the forest. I didn’t stop running until I got to my hive for the second time this week.

I dropped my keys at least three times before managing to unlock my door, rip it open, and throw myself inside.


	5. Chapter 5

I slammed the door behind me and turned the lock shut faster than I remember ever doing before bolting up the stairs and slamming my respiteblock door shut as well. Leaning against the door, my bloodpusher pounding and my lungs heaving, I realized that I had no idea why I ran from the clearing.  
Confused, I leaned my head back against the door and took deep breaths to try and slow my breathing and heart-rate. Residual panic clung to the center of my ribcage and I narrowed my eyes at the ceiling. Why did that cause me to panic? They were just cuffs, but they were shaped like the symbol I wore.  
They were also shaped like the cuffs in the myth of The Sufferer.  
Of course I’ve heard of it. Sometimes lowbloods in meal halls will tell the story to young trolls in hushed voices and make them take a vow of silence, for that sort of talk could and would get you culled. Details of the stories had been lost to time, as those events happened centuries ago, but overall the story still was passed down from generation to generation of trolls. I was actually told the story by Nepeta, who believed that her ancestor was The Disciple herself.  
I stand by the fact that ancestors are a myth. With how trolls reproduce there is no way that anyone could have similar enough genes to be considered related in any way. It was impossible.  
This was all stupid. All this cryptic nonsense was stupid.  
I ran my claws through my hair, scratching at the horn beds before pulling my palmhusk out of my pocket to open up Trollian. Tavros had finally replied and Sollux had left a mass of messages. I opened up Tavros’ first, seeing as it would probably be faster to answer his before trying to go through Sollux’s. A few more messages came through on Sollux’s end as I opened up the window for adiosToreador.

—adiosToreador began trolling carcinoGeneticist—

AT: uM, i HAVEN'T HEARD FROM ARADIA IN A WHILE,

AT: nOT FOR A FEW NIGHTS NOW,,,

AT: iS SHE OKAY,

AT: kARKAT,

AT: wHAT IS GOING ON,

I made the executive decision to not answer him until I read what Sollux was spamming me about, because it probably had to do with Aradia. I had no idea what he could have found, but it most likely was Aradia just fucking with him.

—twinArmageddons began trolling carcinoGeneticist—

TA: karkat vanta2 you lyiing grubfucker!

TA: ii found aradiia and 2he'2 dead!

TA: and iit wa2n't exactly a recent death eiither.

TA: iit had two have been at lea2t 24 hour2 you 2on of a biitch there wa2 no way you could have 2een her thii2 eveniing.

TA: an2wer me damniit

TA: you have 2ome 2eriiou2 explaiiniing two do.

TA: 2uch a2 where the fuck were you la2t niight??

What the fuck?  
How could she have been dead for that long? I literally had just seen her that evening.

CG: WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?

CG: I LITERALLY SAW HER THIS EVENING, I WOULDN’T LIE ABOUT THAT.

CG: AS FOR WHERE I WAS LAST NIGHT I WAS IN MY HIVE DICKING AROUND TRYING TO CODE THIS VIRUS.

CG: TEREZI MESSAGED ME SOME WEIRD SHIT BUT WHAT ELSE IS NEW.

CG: I DIDN’T SEE HER LAST NIGHT, I SAW HER THIS EVENING.

CG: I HADN’T EVEN SPOKEN TO HER IN AT LEAST A PERIGEE BEFORE THAT.

TA: bull2hiit vanta2 that would be 200% iimpo22iible con2iideriing how dead 2he wa2 when ii found her.

TA: no one who diied recently would be that far iintwo riigor mortii2.

TA: 2he'2 fuckiing dead KK, and ha2 been for awhiile now.

CG: THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE.

CG: THIS IS HORSEBEASTSHIT SHE COULD NOT HAVE BEEN DEAD THAT LONG.

CG: HAVE YOU BEEN EATING MIND HONEY AGAIN?

CG: YOU TOLD ME YOURSELF THAT YOU SHOULDN’T EAT THAT STICKY, YELLOW SLIME.

CG: IT’S ALMOST AS BAD FOR YOU AS SOPOR.

TA: no 2hiit

TA: ii diidn’t eat any damn miind honey for the record.

TA: now 2hut the fuck up and tell me the truth.

CG: I *AM* TELLING THE TRUTH NUMBNUTS!

CG: WHY ON THE SURFACE OF ALTERNIA WOULD I NEED TO LIE TO YOU?

TA: 2o ii don’t fuckiing eradiicate you

TA: becau2e iif ii fiind out that you had 2omethiing to do wiith iit

TA: ii wiill fuckiing kiill you.

CG: WHOA WHOA CALM DOWN THERE.

CG: I WOULD NOT LIE TO YOU ABOUT THIS.

CG: YOU KNOW I WOULDN’T.

TA: how do ii know that?

TA: ii don’t tru2t you riight now.

TA: you 2ay you 2aw her la2t.

TA: after 2he wa2 already dead.

TA: ii don’t tru2t you

—twinArmageddons ceased trolling carcinoGeneticist—

I shoved away from my desk and stood up, roughly shoving my claws through my hair. I stormed downstairs toward the mealblock; I didn’t know what happened to her, but there was no way that she would have been dead last night, I literally saw her this evening. There was no way.  
It suddenly occurred to me that the time had seemed to be frozen when I had talked to her. It had been incredibly strange. Yanking the door of the thermal hull open, I stared into it and, not surprisingly, found nothing that would help me. Why did I decide to look in the thermal hull? That was stupid.  
I shut the door and sighed. Aradia had always been strange, with her morbidity and obsession with death. She would dig for bones and other “treasures” in the ground around her hive and in the ruins not far from it. It surprised no one when her and Sollux came together in the red quadrant, considering their personalities. Sollux had his thing where he heard the psychic screams of the imminently deceased, and Aradia had her thing about being able to command the dead.  
Maybe that had something to do about it.  
I walked back upstairs and walked over to the ablutionblock, I shut the door behind me and pulled my hair back out of my face and got really close to the reflectionpane. I stared at myself directly in the eyes to try and find any sort of color that would give me away. Now that my eyes weren’t bloodshot, I could get a better look.  
I hadn’t been seeing things before, there was just a tinge of red starting to ring around my pupils.  
I inhaled sharply in panic and jumped away from the reflectionpane. Shit. I was so dead. If Sollux ends up believing me and doesn’t kill me, the Imperial Drones would.  
I took several deep breaths to avoid hyperventilating and sat on the floor against the wall. I had to figure out what to do. I wasn’t going to be able to stay here much longer, I was going to have to go feral most likely. My meal sac felt like it was holding a stone in it and I had to hold a hand over my mouth to avoid throwing up. I wasn’t sure if I was going to cry or throw up at this point.  
Contrary to popular belief, I actually didn’t completely hate how I lived my life. I got by, I got the excuse to read books and watch movies to earn a living, my friends were idiots but I had friends, and I didn’t do anything that would draw the attention of the highbloods or the drones. I knew one day I was going to have to leave it all, but I wasn’t ready to do that.  
I took another deep breath and my heart rate began to slow. When did I start wheezing? Whenever I did, it was starting to stop. After what felt like hours I stopped shaking and could breath relatively normally. I shakily stood up, leaning against the wall, and straightened. This all was really getting to me and it really needed to stop.  
I walked out of the ablutionblock almost completely out of breath, I needed to figure out what to do about all of this, the nonsense and the reality, really soon.  
I needed to do something about it, or I was going to lose my thinkpan.


	6. Chapter 6

—carcinoGeneticist began trolling gallowsCalibrator—

CG: TEREZI.

CG: DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ARADIA’S MURDER?

CG: I’D THINK IF ANYONE WOULD KNOW ANYTHING IT WOULD BE YOU WITH YOUR JUSTICE FETISH.

CG: YOU SPAMMED THE HELL OUT OF ME LAST TIME SO NOW IT’S MY TURN TO MESSAGE YOU UNTIL YOUR BLIND GANDERBULBS ROLL OUT OF YOUR SKULL.

CG: YOUR NOSE WILL CEASE FUNCTIONING WITH HOW MUCH I’M GOING TO SPAM YOU.

CG: I WILL TROLL YOU TO THE ENDS OF THIS BLASTED ROCK AND BACK.

CG: ANSWER ME DAMNIT!

CG: I KNOW YOU’RE PROBABLY LICKING YOUR SCREEN LIKE A FREAK AND CACKLING AT ME.

CG: BUT FOR FUCK’S SAKE THIS IS IMPORTANT!

CG: DAMNIT TEREZI!

CG: ACTUALLY, YOU KNOW WHAT?

CG: FUCK THIS.

—carcinoGeneticist ceased trolling gallowsCalibrator—

I banged my head against my desk (gently) a few times. As much as she was annoying and was probably getting off to the fact that she was ignoring me, I still felt a pang in my chest cavity that she wasn’t replying. The pang was a mix of worry and sadness, worry that something had happened to her too and sadness at the fact that she was ignoring me.   
I had known Terezi since we were practically still grubs. Her and Vriska were already the best of friends, the reason why no one was surprised when they became moirails, so I met them at the same time.  
Vriska had been a bit nicer at the time considering she hadn’t had her entire life spent bringing trolls to their deaths at the hands of her lusus yet, and Terezi was still clever and maniacal as ever. She got even more so as we all grew older, but even as a wriggler she was clever.   
We met in Hyacintho, the closest lowblooded settlement to Vriska’s hive, when my lusus was dragging me way out there to get schoolfeeding materials that we couldn’t get anywhere near my hive. We met in the marketplace, where the two trolls had been running around causing problems with the older trolls. Terezi had jumped over a troll’s leg as he went to trip her and Vriska got clotheslined. Terezi had been laughing and looking back at her friend before colliding straight into me.  
Naturally, I had panicked a bit and immediately shoved her off me and checked for any damage. Even then, at two sweeps old, I knew better than to get injured where anyone besides my lusus could see. I was fine.  
She had yelped at me and told me to watch where I was going. I argued that it was her that hadn’t been watching where she was going. We bickered for at least ten minutes before my lusus tried to drag me away and Vriska intervened and told us we were both idiots who hadn’t been watching where they were going, saying, “Okay, okay we get it! You’re both idiots and can’t seem to watch where they’re carrying themselves! Can we move on now? We have way too many irons in the fire to spend fussing over who ran into who!”  
Terezi had grinned at me and after talking me in circles about keeping in touch she gave me her and Vriska’s Trollian handles.   
As time ticked and tocked and passed us by, I thought I was black for her. We bickered like kismesises constantly, her usually ending up talking me into a corner and kicking the shit out of me with her razor tongue.   
I remember when she found herself waking up outside in the middle of the day in the middle of a clearing in the forest surrounding her hive. She went blind. Vriska had been the one to send me the word that she had found her new moirail in the forest with teal blood draining from her molten red eyes. There was also two faces painted into the ground on either side of her that looked like Gamzee’s classics.  
:o)  
:o(  
Everyone had turned to Gamzee for an explanation, but his alibi cleared out when it came to our attention that he had been with Eridan at the time in a fish market not far from either of their hives. No one know what happened, not even Terezi.  
I think it was around then that I flipped from black to red.   
She was as clever as ever, but at first she couldn’t read her screen. Vriska, who was staying with her for the time being, had to transcribe everything she said. This was hilarious of course, at least for a few five sweeps old trolls. Vriska would interject what she was saying and omit things that Terezi was saying. The was frustrating and funny, and got funnier the more Terezi learned to use her tongue and nose to “see.”  
She says that she would commune with her lusus, who hadn’t been born yet, and she was teaching her to use her other senses to see, whatever that means. All I know is that it worked. She could see as well as a blind girl could.  
I denied and denied and denied, but I had been so red for her it hurts ever since. Of course if anyone else were to ask, I’d say that I felt nothing of the sort. I stopped trying to convince myself otherwise, but no one else needed to know that I had feelings for her.  
I rubbed at my eyes with the heels of my palms. Maybe Vriska would know something about Aradia’s death, the two of them had a rivalry going on that I wasn’t sure was black or not. I wouldn’t be surprised if Vriska had been the one to kill her honestly.

—carcinoGeneticist began trolling arachnidsGrip—

CG: SERKET.

CG: I KNOW YOU HAD SOMETHING TO DO WITH THIS.

CG: WHAT OTHER CONNIVING BITCH WOULD WITH A REVENGE COMPLEX WOULD GO AFTER ARADIA?

CG: SHE’S DEAD AND I WANT TO KNOW WHY.

AG: Karkat I have no idea what you're going on a8out!

AG: If Aradia is dead then that's news to me!!!!!!!!

AG: In fact, good riddance!

AG: She's 8een a pain in my ass for too long now.

CG: YOU’RE FULL OF SHIT!

CG: SHE WAS MURDERED AND NO ONE ELSE WOULD HAVE THE MOTIVATION.

CG: I WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED.

CG: SHE’S BEEN DEAD FOR A NIGHT NOW.

CG: TELL ME WHAT YOU KNOW!

AG: I'll tell you what I know,

AG: a8solutely nothing!!!!!!!!

AG: I didn't know she was dead until you told me just now.

AG: So congrats idiot you are yelling at someone who didn’t do anything like always.

AG: Are you don’t questioning me now?

AG: I had nothing to do with this.

CG: FINE.

CG: I’M NOT DONE QUESTIONING YOU THOUGH.

CG: HAVE YOU HEARD ANYTHING FROM TEREZI?

CG: SHE’S GONE RADIO SILENT AND IF ANYONE HAS HEARD FROM HER IT’D BE YOU.

There was nothing from her for several minutes. After rapid fire responses before, this was completely abnormal. I tapped my claws on my desk with narrow eyes staring at the screen. What was she up to?

AG: Actually,

AG: I haven’t heard from her either.

AG: She has gone radio silent.

CG: REALLY?

CG: YOU’RE NOT FUCKING WITH ME ARE YOU?

AG: No!!!!!!!! 

AG: I would not joke a8out that!

CG: HOW WOULD I KNOW THAT?

CG: YOU FUCK WITH PEOPLE A LOT FOR VARIOUS REASONS.

CG: I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE UP TO,

CG: BUT I WANT TO KNOW WHERE SHE WENT?

AG: I 8on’t know okay?

AG: 8ut you need to mind you’re own 8amn 8uisness!!!!!!!!

AG: I 8on’t kn8w where she went!!!!!!!!

AG: I h8ven’t hear8 from my own 8amn moirail in two n8ghts

AG: 8nd I 8on’t know why!!!!!!!!

AG: N8w can 8t Vant8s!!!!!!!!

—arachnidsGrip ceased trolling carcinoGeneticist—

I stared at the screen for a moment, my eyes no longer narrowed. Someone got kind of pissed now didn’t she?  
So Vriska wasn’t involved with Aradia, I was going to take a leap of faith about that, and Terezi has disappeared. The possibility of her being murdered as well came to mind, twisting my meal sac into unnatural angles.   
I closed the window that held Vriska and my conversation and opened the window that held Tavros’ response. I figured it was time to reply to him and see what he knew.

CG: ARADIA IS DEAD TAVROS.

CG: SHE’S BEEN DEAD FOR AT LEAST A NIGHT NOW.

CG: SOLLUX IS FLIPPING HIS SHIT.

CG: VRISKA DENIES SHE’S INVOLVED, CLAIMS SHE DIDN’T KNOW UNTIL I TALKED TO HER.

CG: WHAT DO YOU KNOW?

AT: uH, tHAT'S A LOT TO TAKE IN

AT: i HAVEN'T HEARD FROM ARADIA IN A FEW NIGHTS NOW ACTUALLY,,,,,

AT: iS SHE SERIOUSLY DEAD,

CG: SERIOUS AS CARDIAC ARREST.

CG: SHE WAS FOUND MURDERED.

AT: oH NO,,, tHAT'S NOT GOOD,

CG: NO SHIT SHERLOCK!

CG: DO YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION WHATSOEVER?

AT: wELL,,, uH,,, sHE DID TELL ME THERE WAS A CAVERN NEAR NEPETA'S HIVE THAT SHE WANTED TO CHECK OUT,

AT: tHAT WAS THE LAST I HEARD FROM HER THOUGH,

CG: OKAY, THAT SOUNDS LIKE HER.

CG: ANYTHING ELSE I SHOULD KNOW?

AT: uM, nOT THAT I CAN THINK OF RIGHT NOW BUT I'LL LET YOU KNOW IF THAT CHANGES,

CG: GOOD.

CG: I’M THEORIZING THAT A GROUP OF HIGHBLOODS GOT TO HER, BUT I HAVE NO IDEA.

CG: MOST OF THEM ARE BLOODTHIRSTY AND SHE WAS A BURGUNDYBLOOD.

CG: WE’RE AS LOW AS YOU GET ON THE HEMOSPECTRUM SO WE’RE FIRST ON THE CHOPPING BLOCK.

AT: yOU’RE PROBABLY RIGHT,,, bUT THERE’S NOT A WHOLE LOT WE CAN DO ABOUT IT,,,,,

AT: hIGHBLOODS KILL LOWBLOODS,,

AT: tHAT’S JUST HOW LIFE IS KARKAT,,,

Even though I knew he was right, that is just how life is on this planet, but it didn’t have to be. I felt stricken with rage and I clenched my teeth together a little too hard before forcing myself to relax my jaw so I didn’t break any teeth. It didn’t have to be this way.

CG: THAT IS THE STUPIDEST FUCKING REASON TO VALIDATE THE SENSELESS MURDER OF TROLLS FOR SOMETHING AS SHALLOW AS THE COLOR OF THEIR BLOOD. 

CG: THE ENTIRE CASTE SYSTEM IS IS IDIOTIC AND FUCKED UP AND WHILE YEAH IT KEEPS A LOT OF PATHETIC EXCUSES OF EXISTENCE FROM POPULATING THIS SORRY PLANET BUT THOSE ARE ONLY THE LOWBLOODS. 

CG: IT DOESN’T TAKE CARE OF THE BULGESUCKERS THAT ARE HIGHER ON THE HEMOSPECTRUM.

CG: IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.

CG: BUT IT IS AND THAT’S FUCKED UP.

AT: uM,,,, aS MUCH AS I,,, uH,,, aGREE WITH YOU,,,,

AT: tHERE IS, uM,,, nOTHING WE CAN DO,,,,,

AT: uH,,, mY LUSUS IS STUCK IN A VENT AGAIN,,,

AT: i SHOULD GO HELP HIM GET UNSTUCK,

AT: gOOD LUCK WITH FINDING OUT WHAT HAPPENED TO ARADIA,

—adiosToredor ceased trolling carcinoGeneticist—

I groaned with irritation. Tavros, who was the same age as the rest of our friends, was too old to have his lusus still around. We were adults, we didn’t need our custodians to watch over us anymore. Tavros was probably the weakest out of our group, but even he didn’t need his lusus around.   
Tavros was also low on the hemospectrum too, a bronzeblood, but it was only Aradia who ever listened to me rant about the caste system. She didn’t like it either, but not to the same extent that I did. She was also under the impression that we were of the same class, when we weren’t. She could, and I guess did, get culled for stupid reasons, but I would be culled for existing. Even so, she was still the only one who listened to me complain about the mistreatment of lowbloods. Midbloods even got some wreckage, but not nearly as bad.  
It wasn’t fair.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow sorry for the lack of updates, life went upside down and to hell the last two months and I've had no drive to write basically at all. I'm back though! Enjoy this chapter! I have several more written, and I'm still going!

Nights passed, and I found myself waking up in the middle of the day from daymares that sometimes left me screaming through the sopor that was supposed to ease them. I couldn’t remember most of them, but the ones I did remember involved Aradia and her warning, my blood color, and getting executed.

They left me curled in a ball at the bottom of the recouperacoon unable to sleep. I’d spend most of the day awake, only to sleep with more daymares when exhaustion finally took me back under.

It was taking a toll on me too, I would be dozing off in the middle of the night while I was in the middle of coding, or trying to, or while I was reading and so on. Coffee helped a little bit, but after five nights of pretty much no sleep I was exhausted and sluggish, practically dragging myself to get through the night.

On the sixth night after my conversation with Sollux, I decide that I should probably get out of my hive for awhile and see if the still chilly air of second spring could wake me up.

I grabbed my satchel, shoved some supplies in it, and decided to go walking tonight. It’d be better than sitting in front of my husktop all night if I was careful. I would probably head in the direction of the sea. I would have to turn back before I got to it, otherwise I’d risk getting caught out in the sun. There are times when I enjoyed having my ganderbulbs functional and those times were most of the fucking time. They were useful in most circumstances.

I shut the front door behind me and turned the key to lock it. Even though I knew it was locked, I checked to make sure that it indeed locked. It was a neurotic habit that I picked up that was probably unnecessary but who knows. This area wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t the best either. This hivecluster consisted of lowbloods, but lowbloods who were not slaves. We were the lucky ones who managed to avoid that hardship. We were poor, but not absurdly so.

I kicked up dust as I walked out of the hivecluster along a less traveled path. I didn’t like going along the main one unless I was heading toward Principium or Mutationis, too much traffic, so when I took walks away from my hive I took the less traveled, unpaved roads.

The warmer air of early evening wasn’t doing any good to clear my head, however, but it would get colder as the night progressed. It was getting warmer now that first winter was over, which was nice at least. Not all of us had blood the temperature of the sea and therefore was all but immune to the cold. Fucking highbloods.

I was so lost in thinking about the book I was trying to read and the weather that I didn’t notice when the dust on the path began to turn into sand as midnight approached. I didn’t quite register the feel of the cool, salted wind blowing through my cloak and against my face. It was windy enough that I noticed the wind and that if it wasn’t for my horns my hood would have fallen off, but it wasn’t until I reached sand did I realize that I was at the sea. I hadn’t turned around like I should have a few miles ago, shit. There was no way I was going to make it back to my hive before sunrise.

However, I did recognize the area. Gamzee lived not too far from here if memory served.

I shuffled through the sand to the coastline and looked to my right. Nothing that way but more sand and a pier far enough down to be blurry in my vision. To my left, I saw a hive sticking out of the sand. Gamzee’s hive.

I started trekking toward it, sand filling my shoes. I knew full well that the sand was going to stick in my shoes for a week and was going to piss me off the entire time.

Soon, but still a ways from the hive, a figure became visible sitting in the sand, not too far away from the water. His wavy horns stuck up from a mess of curly black hair and he was definitely taller than I was.

Gamzee had actually been shorter than I was until he hit his 8th sweep. He had shot up almost two feet, but hadn’t gained enough weight to balance out, so he was a twig. He didn’t eat much, not even after he quit eating all those slime pies, so he never really gained any weight over the course of the last sweep.

He didn’t move when I finally reached him, and it took me waving a hand in front of his face in order to get his attention. He didn’t jump or anything, nor did he reach for the clubs at his sides, instead he turned his head and smiled lazily at me, “Hey there brother, what’s got you coming all the way out to this marvelous place?”

I shrugged, grumbling, “Needed to get out of my desolate hive.”

“Not many miracles be happenin’ when you’re alone, brother,” Gamzee replied, rising to his feet. “Why don’t we move to the inside of my motherfucking hive and kick this shit where it be warmer?”

I hadn’t realized I was shaking until Gamzee had mentioned it being warmer inside, which was common fucking sense, so I nodded. Smiling like the stupid clown he was, he turned on one heel and started walking back to his hive. I followed behind him, kicking at the sand. I was still exhausted, so I didn’t say a word the entire walk, only yawned.

Gamzee unlocked the front door, which almost surprised me considering how empty-headed he was, and we walked in. It was much warmer than outside, almost uncomfortably so considering my state of exhaustion, but I still welcomed it. The cold wasn’t waking me up anyway.

I looked around, completely unsurprised by the trainwreck that was the clown’s hive. There were clothes, those damn two-wheel device horns, and bottles of Faygo everywhere, a horn nearly tripping me as I stepped over it. I scowled at myself for almost tripping over a horn.

“Welcome to this hive of mine, motherfucker. Uh, there’s not much space to be havin’ for sitting, but feel free to find somewhere,” Gamzee said almost sheepishly, scratching at the back of his head. There really wasn’t much space to sit, so I brushed off a bottle of Faygo or three off a table and sat on it. Fortunately, it held my weight.

“You’re up and motherfucking quiet now Karkat, what’s you got on your pan?” he asked, shoving more things aside to sit next to me on the table. Once again, fortunately it held our weight. What was this table even made of?

I tilted my head back to stare at the ceiling, my hood falling off. What do I even say to that?

“Haven’t slept right in fucking days, too many daymares,” I said simply. That wasn’t a lie.

I didn’t see his facial expression due to not facing him, but I heard his hair move when he nodded, so I continued, “I keep seeing myself dying because I’ve got blood so low on the hemospectrum that my life doesn’t have meaning on this sorry planet.”

He tilted his head this time, that I saw out of the corner of my eye, “Your life has all sorts of meaning bro, you just have to find it in this place.”

I looked back down to stare at the floor, “Not in this world. I’d be killed for no reason if I wasn’t careful, and it’s so fucking stupid! What gives anyone any right to decide whose life is more important than whose?”

I balled my hands into fists in my lap, “It’s not fair. Sure there’s a lot of stupid fucking trolls whom natural selection will happily take care of, but that doesn’t give trolls of colder blood any right to take us out for no good reason.”

Completely ignoring the fact that Gamzee was a purpleblood, I kept going, “If one of us tried to take on a highblood we’d be as good as dead, but they can cull us? It doesn’t make fucking sense!”

“I saw a yellowblood get murdered in an alleyway in Mutationis. He reached out to me before dying, and there was nothing I could do. I’d have died myself, I couldn’t help him,” my voice started to die out as I spoke, my rage beginning to quell. “There was nothing I could do.”

Gamzee ducked his head to look at my face, his eyebrows furrowed and a slight frown on his face, “If there was nothing you could have been doing, then it’s not your motherfucking fault. I see the point yous allmakin’, it really isn’t shit that is right for trolls to be killing one another for reasons that ain’t fuckin’ sound.”

I shrugged, “Glad you see what I’m talking about, Tavros sure as hell didn’t. Aradia did to an extent, but now she’s fucking rotting who knows where, she’s dead.”

The purpleblood’s eyebrows shot up, “What? Oh man, that’s not somethin’ I had heard, when did this motherfucking happen?”

“A few nights ago, probably a group of highbloods honestly.”

“Is that whats getting you all angry like tonight?”

“Kind of? It’s been there for awhile, but it just got worse since hearing about her death. Sollux is pissed and blames me because I was the last one to see her, but she was acting stranger than usual. I don’t know what happened.”

Gamzee nodded before looking over to the window, “Dawn’s gonna be breaking soon, I’m gonna pull down the blackout curtains so we don’t die and shit too.”

He hopped off the table and pulled down the curtains, “It wouldn’t be motherfuckin’ safe for you to all done up and leave, why don’t you stay here for the day, brother?”

“That’d probably be the smart choice, I’d prefer living over getting fried,” I said half to the floor, having gone back to staring at it.

“Alright then, I’ll be gettin’ some blankets for a pile. I don’t have a spare ‘coon, not many miracles happen here either, being alone and shit,” he almost sounded sad at the end of his sentence, but I was too distracted to fully understand what he said. I was too distracted by my own buzzing thoughts.

If my life had all sorts of meaning in his words, then what was it? All I did was write reviews and try not to die. That wasn’t going to change any time soon.

Or would it?

I looked up and followed Gamzee up to his block to make a pile, while doing so thinking some more.

What if I made it change?

Gamzee hoped into his recouperacoon and was out cold almost instantly after saying good morning, and I curled up in the blanket pile.

I could make it change, but how?

I fell asleep thinking of this, and I didn’t forget about it when I woke up screaming from the daymares and waking up the purpleblood across the room. I warned him that I had been having daymares. When he offered me to take his spot in his recouperacoon, I told him that it didn’t do a thing for the daymares. He went back to sleep, and I slept through at least two more before getting up for the evening.

I made breakfast. This stupid clown was going to eat as long as I’m here to make him eat.

He slept until roughly nine in the evening, which was early by his standards, and he walked downstairs looking like a mangled heap of a troll. I didn’t blame him, with me screaming half of the day.

Gamzee looked up at me bleary-eyed as he walked over to the mealblock, “What does you got yourself all to be doin’ motherfucker?”

I shrugged, grabbing some grubcakes, putting them on a nutrition plateau, and shoving them across the table at him, “Making breakfast, now eat. I’m not that atrocious of a fucking cook.”

He looked a little wary, but the purpleblood walked to the table and sat on a stool. I watched him carefully as he took a bite, chewed thoughtfully, and swallowed. Without a word he started making his way through the grubcakes almost ravenously, almost as if he hadn’t had a decent meal in a perigee. Knowing him, he probably hadn’t.

I grabbed two grubcakes and sat down. I hadn’t been eating well either, but I had no appetite.

We ate in silence for awhile before I waved at Gamzee to get his attention. The clown looked up and tilted his head as I spoke, “I think that, maybe, I could try and help this pathetic excuse for a fucking species get it’s shit together.”

Gamzee nodded solemnly and I continued, “I mean, I don’t know how yet and I don’t know where to even begin, but I want to take it into my own claws to make a change.”

I took a deep breath. I couldn’t believe I was doing this.

“Gamzee, would you want to help save this sorry world?”

Gamzee’s face lit up and he genuinely smiled, first time I’ve seen that in sweeps, “Hell motherfuckin’ yes, my wicked motherfucker! We all about to light up this motherfuckin lost world and be all showing it the fuckin’ mystical path to redemption!”

I half smiled, “Good to know at least your clown ass will have my back. Though, don’t you dare tell a soul. I need to figure out how the fuck we’re going to do this first.”

Still smiling, Gamzee nodded vigorously, “Not a single soul will know but yours and mine.”

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well at this point in time I'm almost done with Chapter 14, so I'm not sure why I haven't been updating this one. Sorry about my sudden hiatus on both my projects, life happened and I've had very little drive to write. I'm starting to come out of it though! So here's Chapter 8, enjoy!

I returned to my hive later that evening and managed to get back before dawn. Naturally I didn’t sleep well, and I was beginning to think that I should just give up trying to sleep entirely. I knew eventually I’d pass out from exhaustion, but a troll can wish.

I didn’t want to have these daymares anymore.

Before leaving I had asked Gamzee if he had heard from Terezi at all, only for him to shake his head and say, in his weird speech, that he hadn’t heard from her in several nights.

Worried was an understatement at this point. If she’s been radio silent to her _moirail_ I highly doubt she would message me back. I figured I’d check with Vriska later in the night, see if she’s heard anything, but that would involve _her_ messaging me back. Man this was a mess.

I hung up my cloak and dropped my satchel in their usual places and dragged myself upstairs to my respiteblock. Sitting in front of my desk, I pulled up Trollian to try and see if Sollux would answer me.

 

—carcinoGeneticist began trolling twinArmageddons—

 

CG: SOLLUX!

CG: COME ON YOU KNOW I DIDN’T DO IT.

CG: WHAT FUCKING SOPOR DRINKING IDIOT DO YOU TAKE ME FOR?

CG: WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THIS CAPTOR.

CG: WHAT HAVE YOU FOUND, WHAT’S GOING ON?

CG: ANSWER ME DAMNIT!

 

Twenty minutes passed with no response.

An attempted irritated growl turned into a yawn, so I stared irritably at my screen instead. If he wasn’t going to reply, I could at least try to see if Terezi would. Probably not, but it was worth a shot.

 

—carcinoGeneticist began trolling gallowsCalibrator—

 

CG: TEREZI COME ON, NO ONE HAS HEARD FROM YOU IN NIGHTS.

CG: THIS ISN’T FUNNY.

CG: VRISKA EVEN TOLD ME SHE HASN’T HEARD FROM YOU!

CG: SHE’S YOUR **MOIRAIL** AND YOU HAVEN’T EVEN TALKED TO HER?

CG: WHAT’S GOING ON?

 

Another twenty minutes passed, still nothing.

“Agghhh!” I groaned with a 2xfacepalm combo. Now what?

I remembered that Tavros had said something about Aradia going to dig around in a cavern by Nepeta’s hive, which wasn’t very specific seeing as the cat troll lived in a cave in the side of a _mountain_ , but it was something to go off of.

I pulled up another window in Trollian, leaving the other two open just in case, and started sending messages to Nepeta.

 

—carcinoGeneticist began trolling arsenicCatnip—

 

CG: I DON’T KNOW IF YOU’VE HEARD THIS YET, BUT ARADIA WAS FOUND DEAD THE OTHER NIGHT.

CG: TAVROS TOLD ME THAT SHE HAD TOLD HIM THAT SHE WAS GOING TO GO CHECK OUT A CAVERN NEAR YOUR HIVE,

CG: WOULD YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THAT?

AG: :33 < wait, what?

 

Sweet mothergrub she actually answered.

 

AG: :33 < aradia died?

AG: :33 < why did nobody tell me?

AG: :33 < are you pawsitive that shes dead?

CG: SOLLUX DIDN’T FLY OFF THE METAPHORICAL HANDLE OVER NOTHING NEPETA.

CG: HE’S FREAKING THE FUCK OUT.

CG: SHE’S DEFINITELY DEAD.

AG: :33 < i just saw her around w33k and a half ago!

AG: :33 < yes she had wanted to s33 a cave near here

AG: :33 < but that was the last time i saw her

CG: DO YOU KNOW WHICH CAVE IT WAS?

CG: I’M PRETTY SURE THAT SOLLUX WENT THAT WAY ALREADY,

CG: BUT I WANT TO CHECK IT OUT MYSELF.

 

That was a very last minute decision, but the idea came to mind just before I said it. If I could check out the cavern, maybe something about it will tell me how she died. If I can find out how she died, we could all figure out what to do from there.

 

AG: :33 < yes!

AG: :33 < im the one who showed her where it was

AG: :33 < im pawsitive of where it is

AG: :33 < if you want i could show you?

CG: THAT WOULD BE GREAT ACTUALLY

CG: GIVE ME A FEW MINUTES TO GRAB WHAT I NEED AND I’LL HEAD TOWARD YOUR HIVE.

AG: :33 < here take the coordinates

AG: :33 < its closer to your hive than mine is

AG: :33 < by the time you get here itll almost be dawn

 

—arsenicCatnip send a file—

 

CG: THANKS.

CG: I’LL MEET YOU THERE, GIVE ME A FEW HOURS.

 

—carcinoGeneticist ceased trolling arsenicCatnip—

 

I shoved back from my chair, the legs scraping against the floor, and stood up. Without missing a beat I grabbed my palmhusk off my desk and walked downstairs to grab my satchel and cloak. I didn’t think to pack food, I was more interested in getting answers.

I stepped outside into the wind, which had picked up since I returned, and nearly stumbled off my front step. I looked up at the sparse trees that dotted the hivecluster to see the leaves being all but ripped from the branches and scattered. Thankfully no one was there to see me almost fall over from the wind.

It was almost completely silent save the wind and the footsteps of a few trolls here and there. Soon enough it was just the sound of the wind and my feet on the gravel as I walked toward the mountainside in which Nepeta lived.

The cavern was farther away from my hive than Gamzee’s hive was, but I figured I’d make it before sunrise. Soon enough the forest that the path cut through got thicker and I had to start making my way through underbrush to get to where I was going. There wasn’t a trail to get to the cave, I didn’t expect there to be.

The underbrush wasn’t as thick as it could be, considering first winter had just ended, and I was grateful for that. I could at least see the roots of the trees so I didn’t trip, fall, and bust my shit open on the ground. There were still plenty of plants that had started to grow and I had nearly tripped on a few. I wasn’t accustomed to traveling in the forest like Nepeta was, so she would definitely be there before me.

I checked my palmhusk to see how close I was to the coordinates that the cattroll had sent me and almost tripped into the small clearing that came before the cavern. Nepeta was leaning against the rock face picking at her claws as I came up, looking up when she heard me.

“Hi Karkat!” she smiled. “It’s almost dawn so we should purrabably head inside. We might have to spend the day in there, unless you want to get fried.”

I shook my head, “I’m good, why don’t we head in?”

She nodded and I jogged to catch up with her as she walked into the dark of the cave. I dug through my satchel for the flashlights I had brought with and handed her one. She nodded her thanks and turned it on, flashing it inside for us to see where the hell we were going.

Since she was lighting the path, she led the two of us down the winding pathway through the cavern. I turned on my flashlight and started to look at the walls. I thought I was crazy for a moment, because it looked like there were faded words on the walls.

I grabbed Nepeta’s shoulder, causing her to jump, “Hey Nepeta, am I losing my thinkpan or do those markings look like words?”

She looked from the wall on our left to the wall on our right, her eyebrows furrowed, “They do, I can’t really make much out though.”

I walked over to the wall on our left and squinted my eyes to try and make out the words. They looked like they were written ages ago, covered in dust. I went to brush away some of the dirt but Nepeta grabbed my wrist, “Don’t, they’re painted on with the blood of the beasts of the forest, and seeing how old these markings are they’d just rub off.”

“Well that’s fucking stupid,” I grumbled. I squinted at them again, and managed to make out the phrase, “Unity for all from red to fuchsia.”

I tilted my head to one side and looked up to the next row of of words and could make out the words, “Fair treatment,” and, “Justice.” The words were written neater the higher up the wall I looked.

I turned my head to Nepeta, and found her trying to decipher the words closer to the floor, “Any luck?”

She shook her head, “Not really, I’ve managed to make out the sentence, ‘For all trolls,’ and the words, ‘Fairness,’ ‘Justice,’ and, ‘Equal.’ I can’t make out anything else really.”

“Okay, so whoever wrote these must have thought that Alternia could unite as one, and wrote it all down on the walls,” I spoke softly without even meaning to. I don’t talk quietly, I just didn’t.

Nepeta stood up again and turned to me, “Let’s keep going, There’s much more cave to see if I’m right.”

Nodding, I started to keep walking farther into the cavern. It was starting to get really cold, and I was glad that I wore long sleeves basically all the time and had my cloak, otherwise I’d be shaking. Nepeta had her jacket, and she didn’t seem to be bothered by it at all. However, she did live in a cave instead of a hive like a normal troll.

I met her through Equius, who is Vriska’s neighbor, a long time ago. They’ve been moirails for longer than I’ve known them, and that was probably a good thing. Equius had rage issues worse than mine, and Nepeta was a force to be reckoned with. She took down the beasts of the forest bare handed, she could kill a troll and not blink. They balanced each other out so they weren’t nearly as dangerous, so that worked out well.

The stone that made up the dark walls were unknown to me, but they were a dark grey. The words were a rainbow of color, the very colors of the hemospectrum itself. Some of the darker colored words were completely illegible, whereas the lighter colors were a little easier to make out.

There were stalactites and stalagmites everywhere, shiny from the mineral deposits that made them, and the farther in we got the more we found. The ground became shiny and slippery from the water and mineral deposits, so we had to walk slower so we didn’t slip.

I was the one to find the burgundy blood drying on top of the shining floor.

“Uh, Nepeta?” I started. “I think I found where Aradia died.”

She spun around and looked at the ground, covering her mouth with her hand, “I think you’re right.”

I looked around the area, there was nothing that could be considered evidence as to who killed her. The floor around the blood was clear, and her body was nowhere to be found.

“Where’s her… body…?” Nepeta asked, trailing off.

“Sollux found her, so he probably took it to dispose of it,” I muttered. I couldn’t imagine having to bury a matesprit after they were murdered, and it made my chest clench in a strange way. Was that a pale feeling?

Not the time to think about that Vantas!

Nepeta nodded and turned to where the cavern kept winding into the darkness, “We should keep going, see what else we can find.”

I grunted an affirmative and we continued onward, stepping around the puddle of drying blood. There still wasn’t any sort of evidence that showed anyone was here let alone who killed her.

A tense silence fell between us, the only sound coming from our footsteps on the stone floor. The words on the walls continued to follow us all the way to the back of the cavern, which we finally reached after what felt like forever.

Nepeta threw her arm back and grabbed my shoulder, “Karkat, I think I found something.”

“What?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.

She stepped aside, not letting go of me even though the angle had to be uncomfortable, and shown her flashlight on what looked like a pile of olive dust with bones and shreds of fabric on top of it. The bones also had dried olive dust on them, as did the fabric shreds. The fabric was held down by the bones, which by the looks of it were troll bones, and some of the shreds had dulled candy red stripes on them, but the vast majority of them had dulled olive strips on them.

Nepeta didn’t let go, but turned her head back and said, “I think I know what these are from.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! I was hoping to upload this chapter before I leave for a convention tomorrow, I hope you guys all like it! I'll put up Chapter 10 sometime next week!

I didn’t quite register what Nepeta had said, I was far too busy screaming on the inside.

Anyone with knowledge about the Sufferer’s story would immediately realize that the red striped fabric had to be the Righteous Leggings. The olive striped fabric had to be The Disciple’s clothing, and the dust had to be the remains of her blood. She was an oliveblood, and The Sufferer a mutant blood.

But that was all a myth wasn’t it?

I was beginning to lose my belief that it was a myth. With everything going on, it was pointing more and more toward the whole ancestor thing. I didn’t want to believe it, but I was starting to think there was some truth in the matter.

“Karkitty?” Nepeta let go and waved her hand in my face. I jumped, pulled from my thoughts, “Yeah?”

“Did you hear me?” she looked concerned, like I was gonna pass out or something.

I shook my head, and she repeated herself, “I think I know what these are from, from my ancestor, The Disciple, and The Sufferer’s Righteous Leggings.”

I tried to glare at her, “That’s all a myth and you know it. The whole ancestor thing isn’t possible you know, not with how the slurry works.”

She gave me a better glare than I was probably giving her, “I know you don’t think it’s real, but have you ever stopped to think of the purrosibility of the legend at least?”

I shook my head again, “It’s a myth and nothing more. The legend was made up to give lowbloods hope that they can’t achieve and ancestors are simply nonse-”

“No Karkat!” Nepeta interrupted. “They aren’t. They are as true as all the history legends of Her Imperious Condescension and you know it.”

I growled but the last of my resolve to hold onto the belief that they weren’t true faltered and faded. She was right.

“Fine,” I growled. “I believe you. Now what do you make of us finding this?”

She shrugged, “Maybe Aradia knew it was here and went digging for it?”

I shifted uncomfortably and nodded, “Probably.”

“What’s wrong?” Nepeta noticed my discomfort, shit.

I sighed, “Promise not to tell anyone?”

She thought for a second before nodding slowly, “What’s going on?”

I ran both hands through my hair and exhaled slowly. This was going to be unpleasant, “Terezi sent me a series of messages on Trollian with some cryptic message bullshit, and then disappeared. Then I went to the market and saw Aradia, who gave me another cryptic message and disappeared. Time seemed to have stopped while we were talking though, so that was weird too.”

She tilted her head to the side, crossing her arms, and I continued, “I find out she’s missing from Sollux, who then goes looking for her. I went for a walk in the forest and found a pillar and a feral troll, who gave me _another_ cryptic message, and ran. He was looking at something so I went over to see what the hell the he was looking at, and found cuffs in the shape of my sign. After getting back I found out that Aradia was dead, and Sollux was accusing me of it because I apparently saw her after she had died, which makes absolutely no sense. I don’t know what’s going on, Terezi won’t answer me and Aradia’s dead.”

Nepeta’s eyes had gone wide by the end of my explanation, and in the dim light I could barely make out that her skin had paled. “I think that highbloods attacked her, that they found her before she could find these remains and killed her,” I added.

She nodded slowly, “I think you might be right on that.”

Self-doubt hit me in the chest, doubt that telling her all this was a bad idea and what I was about to say was an even worse idea, but I kicked myself in the teeth and opened my mouth to speak, “It’s not fair that lowbloods get killed for the stupidest of reasons, and this is one of them. I want to change it, I’m not sure how yet, but I want to change everything. I want society to stop the endless cycle of violence and death and actually live together in relative harmony. I want to change it, I even already have Gamzee ready to help.”

Nepeta stared at me and I pressed on, “If the ancestor thing isn’t a myth, then The Sufferer is my ancestor. If that is true, then all this cryptic nonsense makes more sense.”

If her eyes could get any wider, they did, “Karkitty… are you saying that you want to follow the Sufferer’s footsteps, to finish his work?”

I looked away from her, “I guess that’s what I’m saying.”

“And is that why you’ve always tried to stay anonymous with your blood color?”

“Yeah, can you blame me?”

“I guess not.”

We fell into a tense silence for a few moments that felt like they stretched into years. I spoke first, quietly, “Will you join me?”

She blinked, stared, and then blinked again. She bit her bottom lip for a second, obviously weighing the pros and cons. She could very well be killed for this, publicly executed or just culled on the side of a pathway somewhere. It would be dangerous, whether we managed to get anywhere with it or not. Just the thought of going against the Empress were grounds for being culled on site, if not executed publicly as an example.

We could easily die, and that’s something worth considering here.

After a tense silence that lasted what felt like years, Nepeta slowly nodded. I stared at her, not sure if I had seen her actually nod or if it was a trick of the poor lighting, but she nodded again, more firmly this time, “I’ll help Karkat. This has been a long time coming hasn’t it?”

I kept staring at her, waiting for her to say this was some sort of joke, but she didn’t. I nodded and the corner of my mouth may or may not have upturned a little, but if anyone were to ask I’d say it was a trick of the lighting, “I guess it has.”

She smiled wide and closed her eyes for a moment before opening them and grimacing, “Equius is going to be pissed when he finds out, but by then we should have a good following going right?”

“Hopefully,” I shrugged. I was really hoping the blueblood wouldn’t find out for quite awhile, that way he can’t sabotage anything. “We should probably get out of this cave, it has to be after noon by now and we need to get back to shelter that isn’t this frigid cave.”

She chuckled before starting to walk back the way we came, “AC takes the lead valiantly to make sure nothing can stop us from leaving."

I rolled my eyes, “Your cave-hive is closest right? We should head there.”

Nepeta looked back and pouted, probably disappointed that I didn’t join in on her roleplay, “Yeah, probably. There’s enough cover from the trees that our cloaks should be able to shield us enough from the sun to avoid damage."

“Good, because I didn’t plan on getting my sorry ass fried today,” I grumbled. “Just this once you can lead on, because I don’t know where shit is around this twisted forest.”

She grinned and marched on toward the exit.

Just after dusk we were walking into Nepeta’s cave-hive, exhausted, and Nepeta’s lusus came bounding up. She also still had her lusus, why did that not surprise me.

“I don’t have a spare recouperacoon, but there’s plenty of furs around that you can make a pile with,” Nepeta explained. “Sorry Karkat.”

“It’s fine, I’ve been having shitty fucking daymares so I can’t sleep anyway. If you hear me screaming just roll over and go back to dreamland,” I muttered.

She frowned, “Daymares? Doesn’t the sopor take those away?”

“Not these ones, I can’t even remember half of them I just know I wake up screaming in an insane panic.”

She nodded, looking sympathetic, “Well, let’s get a pile ready for you.”

We gathered furs that, thankfully, weren’t soaked with blood and made a pile. Nepeta climbed into her ‘coon and I passed out on the pile almost immediately. The night’s journey was exhausting considering we had spent the entire day looking through the cavern without sleeping. As we walked out we had agreed to leave the remains of our ancestors behind, knowing that if we were caught with them we’d be as good as dead. A small part of me wished I could have kept a small bit of fabric from The Sufferer’s leggings, but I don’t know why.

I woke up Nepeta a few times with my screaming before I decided that my nap was over with around midnight. Sitting up, I rubbed my temples before rubbing my sore throat. 

Screaming bloody murder gives you a scratchy, sore throat at time. Nepeta was just getting out of the ablutionblock with a head of wet, matted hair tangling around her horns.

“Evenin’” she yawned. “I have plenty of food if you want anything.”

I shook my head, my stomach was still doing backflips from the last round of nightmares and the idea of eating was repulsive, “I’m probably going to head out soon so I make it back before the sun rises, but I want to see if I can get ahold of Sollux first.”

“Go furr it, I’m going to eat.”

I nodded, yawned, and pulled out my palmhusk and opened Trollian.

—carcinoGeneticist began trolling twinArmageddons—

CG: SO NEPETA AND I INVESTIGATED THE CAVE WHERE ARADIA WAS MURDERED.

CG: WE FOUND WHERE HER BODY WAS, BUT IT’S NOT THERE ANYMORE.

CG: WE KEPT GOING BACK THROUGH THE CAVE AND WE FOUND MORE REMAINS, I CAN’T SAY WHAT.

CG: I’D HAVE TO TELL YOU IN PERSON.

CG: BUT

CG: THAT WAS NOT AN ORDINARY CAVERN SOLLUX.

CG: WE REALLY NEED TO TALK.

TA: what do you mean by "not an ordiinary cavern?"

Thank any deity that doesn’t exist he responded.

CG: LIKE I SAID I CAN’T SAY THROUGH HERE.

CG: I REALLY DON’T WANT TO DIE.

CG: AND THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF THERE WERE ANY SORT OF RECORD THAT I KNEW THIS FUCKERY.

TA: thii2 ii2 explaiiniing ab2olutely nothiing and by exten2iion a wa2te of my tiime.

TA: al2o,

TA: what do you mean that aa'2 body wa2n't there?

CG: WAIT, SO YOU DIDN’T TAKE CARE OF HER BODY AT ALL?

CG: BECAUSE NEPETA AND I DID NOT SEE IT AND WE INVESTIGATED THAT ENTIRE FUCKING CAVERN.

CG: IT WAS COLDER THAN SERKET’S HEART IN THERE.

TA: no, ii diidn't do anythiing wiith her body

TA: ii left iit becau2e iif ii left wiith iit ii'd get 2hiit from the blueblood2.

TA: ii 2tiill don't tru2t you vanta2

TA: ii'm goiing two go look for my2elf

TA: ju2t two make 2ure that what you're 2ayiing ii2 true

TA: you have no rea2on two liie two me, but ii 2tiill don't beliieve you

TA: e2peciially becau2e of that vague bull2hiit

TA: ii'll let you know what ii fiind

—twinArmageddons ceased trolling carcinoGeneticist—

I sighed, mostly relieved that he responded at all. The last thing I wanted was for something to happen to him. Pity panged at my cardiovascular system, the stupid troll had just lost his matesprit and he was obviously upset because of it. I wanted to help ease that, help him find out what happened.

I don’t know when I ended up pale for the yellowblood, but it was definitely a thing.

I looked up to see Nepeta grinning at me. I narrowed my eyes at her, “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You’re pale for him aren’t you?” she asked, still grinning.

“Fuck off Leijon!” I snapped, which only made her laugh, turn, and walk over to her shipping wall and paint a diamond between a shitty drawing of Sollux and I. There had been a question mark there before, and that was irritating. Her shipping habits were just weird.

I rose to my feet and stretched, “Well, I’m going to go back to my hive. Thanks for everything.”

She looked over her shoulder, “No problem Karkat, keep me updated on things.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I grumbled and headed out.

I kicked open my front door and slammed it behind me. I was too exhausted to move anymore, walking was no longer having any of me. I all but fell face first on my couch as soon as I was far enough in my hive to fall on it.

I rolled onto my back and pulled my palmhusk out again. I was going to try to get ahold of Terezi again, but I was starting to think that something had happened to her because she wasn’t replying at all. She loved to needle and jab at me, and she wasn’t doing that.

—carcinoGeneticist began trolling gallowsCalibrator— 

CG: OKAY SERIOUSLY WHERE THE FUCK DID YOU GO?

CG: NO ONE HAS FUCKING HEARD FROM YOU IN NIGHTS!

CG: WHERE THE HELL DID YOU GO?

—carcinoGeneticist ceased trolling gallowsCalibrator—


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well I'm updating later than I had originally wanted to, but I was basically at work all week and didn't have time to post! Here's chapter 10 guys, enjoy!

I woke up the following evening some time after dusk for once. I only woke up four times from nightmares, which was a huge fucking blessing.

Rubbing my head, I dragged myself into the ablution trap and washed the sopor off myself. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do today after a quick run to the marketplace in Principium, probably continue to try and code some viruses.

I managed to get my slightly more rested but still exhausted frame of a body out to the market, gathered some groceries, and trekked back. I could see in the way that the other trolls moved in comparison to the enforcers that they feared for their lives. I could see in my own movements that I did too.

They moved quickly, skittishly, and anxiously. They didn’t make eye contact with others unless they had to, and many moved with their heads down. They avoided the enforcers like the plague, clearing a large space around them so they weren’t anywhere near the bluebloods. I did the same thing. I gave the bluebloods a wide berth so they didn’t have a chance to get a good look at me. I kept my head down and only made eye contact with those I had to.

I put everything away when I got back and marched up to the ablutionblock. I pressed my face against the reflectionpane to look at my eyes. I had been doing this for days, and I could slowly see the red start to fill in. It wasn’t quite noticeable from a distance yet but it was only a matter of time. With blood as bright as mine and with the luminescence that all troll eyes had, I’d be a blinking, candy red target. The only one who knew about my blood color now was Nepeta, and she lived too far away for her to help bring me supplies to live by if I were to stay here.

There’s also the question of, “Karkat, how the actual fuck would you be able to help all trolls break this caste system if you stayed hiding in your own hive?”

I don’t know past me from ten seconds ago, I don’t think I can from the inside of my hive.

I kicked the cabinet and stormed out of the ablutionblock and marched into my respiteblock. I didn’t know how I was going to do any of this. I had two of my friends on my side, but I had them in complete secrecy about it and I didn’t know how I was going to recruit anyone else.

How was I going to do this?

I all but threw myself into my desk chair and opened Trollian. Still no word from Terezi, whom I was beginning to consider making a trip to make sure she was okay. This had nothing to do with the fact that I’m flushed for her, nothing at all.

Okay, maybe it did a little bit. I just wanted to make sure she was okay though.

I was about to send Vriska another irritated message to try and see if she had heard from Pyrope at all when a message box from Sollux popped up.

 

—twinArmageddons began trolling carcinoGeneticist—

 

TA: okay 2o ii checked out the cave, and her body ii2 fuckiing gone

TA: there ii2 nothiing there but driied blood, liike you 2aiid

TA: iit doe2n't even look liike anyone dragged iit away or anythiing, iit wa2 ju2t gone

CG: DO YOU BELIEVE ME NOW YOU INEPT NOOKFUCKER?

CG: I HAVE NO REASON TO LIE TO YOU!

TA: ye2 fiine ii fuckiing beliieve you okay?

TA: can we move on from that now?

TA: do you have any iidea where 2he miight have been taken two?

TA: becau2e ii have liiterally no iidea and ii'm goiing two gue22 and 2ay that thii2 ha2 two do wiith how 2he diied

CG: I HAVE NO FUCKING IDEA.

CG: BUT YEAH IT PROBABLY HAS TO DO WITH HOW SHE DIED.

CG: I’D SUGGEST THAT WE ASK TEREZI TO HELP US OUT WITH THIS BUT SHE’S FALLEN OFF THE FACE OF FUCKING ALTERNIA.

CG: LAST I HEARD NOT EVEN VRISKA HAD HEARD FROM HER.

TA: 2eriiou2ly? je2u2 fuck

TA: well then we're ju2t goiing two have two fiigure thii2 out our2elve2

TA: ii'm comiing by your hiive 2iince ii'm already halfway there anyway

TA: ii'll be there iin an hour or two

 

—twinArmageddons ceased trolling carcinoGeneticist—

 

CG: OKAY, I GUESS I’LL SEE YOU IN AN HOUR OR TWO.

 

I closed out the window and got up, deciding that I should probably clean my sorry excuse for a hive for the thousandth time because I was actually going to have company. Said company was also someone I was so pale for it hurts, so I wanted to make it look like I actually took care of myself and my hive.

I could never have anyone close in a quadrant, as much as I wanted to. I’d be damned if I was ever in a concupiscent quadrant because a bucketful of slurry would lead to my demise rather quickly, but even a conciliatory quadrant I’d be pretty fucking damned. A tearful feelings jam would be a death sentence seeing as troll tears were our blood color, and scratches and bruises can and probably will occur when trying to auspicize two trolls hellbent on an unhealthy kismesissitude. I could never have a quadrantmate, no matter how bad I wanted one.

I mean, I could with Nepeta now that she knows, but at the same time, I didn’t feel anything toward her. I didn’t tell Gamzee, but I didn’t feel anything toward him either. Nepeta is the only one who knows.

She also may ship me with Sollux, but she should know as well as I do that her ship won’t sail. I’ll probably end up dead if it does. Especially with Sollux’s opinion of me as of late.

I was almost done with sweeping my mealblock when I heard a series of pounds on my front door in patterns of two. I set the broom aside and walked over to the door, yelling, “Hold on a damn second I’m coming.”

I opened the door and barely managed to dodge a fist that was about to slam onto the door again. I was about to snap at him about almost punching me in the face when I actually caught a look at him as he leaned on my door frame, obviously exhausted.

He was a mess to say the least, his hair unkempt and matted, clothes ragged and torn up. Part of it probably had to do with him traveling through a forest while flying because the damn psionic could do that, but by the way his skin around his eyes were yellowed and how his bottom lip was all chewed up, he wasn’t taking Aradia’s death very well. Pity panged at my thoracic cavity again and I failed to suppress the urge to grab him by the shirt and pull him inside, saying, “You piece of shit, get in here. You look like hell.”

He grumbled something along the lines of, “I know KK,” and stumbled after me as I pulled him probably a little too fast into my hive, let go of him, and kicked the door shut. I started roughly dragging him toward the stairs, “I’m going to clean your ass up, for the love of everything it’s like you don’t take care of yourself.”

“It’s been a little rough lately KK,” he half-heartedly snapped. “You know, with my matesprit dying and all.”

“I know,” I muttered, irritation dying with all the pity that was clogging up my throat. This whole pale thing needed to abate, like, yesterday.

I made a mental check of everything in my ablutionblock before pulling him into it to make sure there was nothing in there that would damn me to an early grave. There wasn’t, so I pulled him in and kicked the door shut. “Sit,” I ordered, and he somewhat obediently sat on the side of the ablution trap. He looked dazed in his exhaustion, and I was going to make him sleep in my recouperacoon for the day. He needed the sleep.

I ran the water and stripped the yellowblood of his shirt, shoes, and pants and grabbed a ablution sponge. He didn’t think anything of it, just sat in his boxers with his feet in the water as I scrubbed at the shallow abrasions on his back. I was getting water on the floor but I didn’t care, I could always wash the floor again.

He didn’t say anything, just stared at the water. I don’t think he’s done much of anything as far as coping, which didn’t surprise me much. He has probably been either trying to figure out how Aradia was murdered or stuck on a coding binge. It’s been almost two weeks and he was still a complete wreck. I didn’t blame him in the slightest, but it doesn’t even look like he’s tried to take care of himself.

I scrubbed at his arms, trying to get the mud off them. How he managed to get mud on him while flying was beyond me. His hands and fingers were covered in dirt and drying mud, as if he had been digging for something.

“Find anything in the mud?” I asked, still scrubbing.

“No, I thought I saw something in the mud near the entrance, but it turned out to be a clump of discolored mud. Thought it could have been bronzeblood, but it didn’t have the right consistency,” he mumbled. He was oddly subdued, which eased my pale impulses but was still confusing. He wasn’t like this usually.

“…You alright?” I asked after another few minutes of quiet.

“Not really,” he muttered, shaking his head. “I need to find out why she died.”

I nodded and moved on to his chest and throat, scrubbing away. I was probably scrubbing harder than I needed to, his skin turning a slight shade of yellow as I scrubbed, but I kept at it anyway.

“Before she disappeared,” Sollux started. “AA, Aradia, told me that something big was going to happen. I asked her to elaborate, but she disconnected before giving me an answer. I didn’t hear from her again.”

“That’s… odd, even for her,” I finished scrubbing at his chest and stood up, rinsing him off with a wet towel. After finishing with that I shut off the water, and stepped out of the ablution trap, my feet and the bottoms of my pants soaked. “I’m going to get you some food, I’ll be right back.”

He didn’t respond, just continued staring at the water as it drained away. After getting food from the mealblock, I walked back up to find him with his head in his hands. I watched and waited to see if his shoulders would shake to see if he was crying, but he remained still. I walked in, set the plate on the sink counter, and sat next to Sollux on the side of the ablution trap. He started rubbing his eyes with the heels of his palms and I heard a soft sob. This time I was able to resist the urge to put my arm around his shoulders and shoosh him, thankfully.

“When I saw her at the market,” I started quietly, causing the other to jump and quickly dry his eyes. “She told me, and I quote, ‘You will be the turning point in the tide of our society, and even our race itself. You cannot fail,” and walked away. It was strange because it looked like time itself was frozen, because no one moved or noticed us until after she was out of sight.”

Sollux’s head snapped to the side to look at me, his eyes round and alert, yellow just barely ringing his pupils, “During that weird conversation I had with AA before she disappeared she mentioned that someone with candy red blood would cause a change, and that change was going to be big.”

Inside I was panicking, hopefully it didn’t show too much when I gave an irritable but confused look, “And that is relevant how?”

“What is your blood color Karkat?”

I’m pretty sure all of my blood just left my head at that particular point in time, hopefully enough of the red in my eyes faded with that blood loss too, “Burgundy, you know this already.”

“If she said that cryptic shit to you, I’m going to need some fucking proof shitstain,” he growled, horns sparking with the red and blue of his psionics. “Show me, the isn’t enough red in your eyes for me to be able to tell.”

“Why do I need to prove it to you!?” I shouted. “You don’t fucking believe me about anything anymore you fuckwit, would it kill you to have some trust in me?”

“After all this shit? I don’t trust anyone!” he yelled back, sparks strong enough to knock shit over flying from his horns and from around his eyes.

A shout of exasperation later, I buried my face in my hands, “Fine, I can’t injure myself or I’ll be fucking culled so fast you wouldn’t even have a chance to blink, but I do have mutant, candy red blood. Sue me for trying to keep it hidden, I like living most of the time.”

His expression went from angry to bewildered in the time it took _me_ to blink, psionics dissipating. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but the fact he hadn’t called for the drones yet probably was a good sign.

His face shifted into something more solemn, “She said something big is going to happen, and someone of bright red blood will finish his ancestor’s work. She better be right.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow sorry this took so long. I've been working a lot, moved into my apartment, and just life happened. I still need to finish Chapter 15, but I should be working on that soon. As for this chapter, enjoy!

“You’re staying here for the time being,” I told Sollux the following evening, who didn’t put up much of a fight about it. I had all but shoved him into my recouperacoon the morning before, telling him that he needed it more than I did. I explained that he’d probably get woken up by my nightmare screaming, but he slept right through it. He must not have been sleeping either.

That makes two of us.

A few nights pass with similar sleeping arrangements until Sollux managed to force me into _my own_ recouperacoon. I slept a little better, and after the first few days I started waking Sollux up with my screaming so I woke him up less this way.

This evening I was munching on some grubtoast when I pulled up my palmhusk and checked to see if Terezi had replied to _anything_ that I had sent her. Nothing.

“Still nothing from Terezi?” Sollux asked from behind me, causing me to jump almost ten feet in the air. I spun around and stared at the taller troll, who straightened as I turned. He snickered at my surprise, which earned him a glare, “No, she’s still MIA. Think you could trace her account and see if she’s even been _online?_ ”

He raised an eyebrow, “Why is this so important to you KK? Why is her disappearance so important to you that you want me to invade her privacy?”

“You don’t really care about invading her space do you?”

“Not really, but my question still stands.”

I buried my face in my hands and groaned, “Because I’m worried that something happened to her like something happened to Aradia. She told me some cryptic bullshit and then vanished.”

I moved my hands from in front of my face and saw that Sollux had gone near white and was staring at me. I hadn’t told him what Terezi had told me before she disappeared, just that she wouldn’t message me back.

He slowly pulled his palmhusk out of his pocket and started tapping away with it. Within five minutes of tense silence, he lowered his phone and stared at me again, “She hasn’t been online at all, not for at least two weeks.”

I felt my overheated blood turn to ice by the end of his statement, “She hasn’t?”

“Nope. No online activity at all for 16 nights.”

“Oh _fuck_ ,” I choked out, panic seizing my throat. Something happened to her, _something’s_ happened to her. She may be a complete badass but she’s not _bulletproof._

Sollux crouched so he was at eye level with me, “KK? KK you’re not breathing are you okay?”

“Something’s happened to her,” I wheezed. “There’s no way she’d have been offline that long if everything was _fine goddamnit.”_

“KK? KK _breathe_ ,” Sollux insisted. “You’re panicking, and panicking isn’t going to help you here.”

I gripped the sides of my head and curled into a ball, “We need to go find her, we need to fin-”

“We’ll find her okay? Now _breathe._ ”

I took a breath that was much deeper than I thought I’d be able to manage and exhaled slowly. I remembered telling him these things sweeps ago, how to calm down from a panic attack. I taught him this, I should be able to use it myself just like I used to when I was younger.

After several minutes of me forcing air in and out of my lungs, I managed to calm down enough to uncurl from the ball I had formed. Sollux was actually rubbing my back, which I hadn’t noticed before. He stopped and tilted his head so he was in my line of sight, “Are you breathing now?”

I nodded slowly, and sighed, “I really wish you didn’t see that.”

“Well I did, and it’s probably better that I _am_ here seeing as I could take you to her hive a lot faster than you would be able to walk to it,” he pointed out.

He had a valid point there.

I sat up fully, rubbing at my eyes with the heels of my palms, and before I could suggest that we left as soon as possible, both of our palmhusks started buzzing.

 

arachnidsGrip opened memo on board Listen here losers!!!!!!!!

 

twinArmageddons was added to the memo!

carcinoGeneticist was added to the memo!

 

AG: I've 8een questioned 8y 8oth of you losers a8out Terezi and I guuuuuuuuess I should inform you that I finally was a8le to get out to her hive.

AG: Pro8lem with that is is that it's completely fucking empty!!!!!!!!

AG:It doesn't look like anyone's 8een here for a few nights at the very least also.

CG: WAIT SO SHE’S NOT EVEN THERE?

CG: WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?

TA: ii had ju2t looked and 2aw that 2he ha2n't been onliine iin week2

TA: whiich explaiin2 why 2he ha2n't gotten back two liiterally anyone

CG: OKAY SO SHE’S DROPPED OFF THE FACE OF THIS SPACE ROCK,

CG: AND YOU DIDN’T FUCKING THINK TO CHECK OUT HER HIVE UNTIL **NOW**?

CG: WHAT KIND OF MOIRAIL ARE YOU?

CG: I KNOW YOU’RE A HUGE BITCH BUT THIS TAKES THE FUCKING SWEET FROSTED PASTRY CAKE

TA: kk 2hut the fuck up 2he'2 there now at lea2t

CG: NO FUCK YOU IT’S BEEN TWO WEEKS!

AG: Have you considered the fact that I still have my lusus to feed Vantas????????

AG: If I don’t feed her, then a lot of trolls die.

AG: So can it!

TA: ii'll kiick you and ban you from thii2 memo

TA: ju2t 2hut up for a 2econd

TA: vk diid you fiind anythiing that could help u2 fiigure out where 2he went?

TA: are you even 2tiill there?

AG:Yeah I'm still here.

AG: It looks like there was a struggle of some sort 8ut it looks old, like it happened awhile ago.

AG: You two are coming to help me investig8 whether you like it or not.

CG: SOUNDS FINE TO ME.

CG: WE WERE GOING TO HEAD OVER THERE ANYWAY TO SEE IF WE COULD FIND ANYTHING WHEN YOU DROPPED US ON THIS DAMN MEMO.

CG: WE’LL BE THERE.

TA: becau2e of the dii2tance iit'2 goiing two take u2 untiil tomorrow niight two get there

TA: even wiith u2 flyiing

TA: 2o make due wiith that becau2e gettiing burned aliive by the 2un ii2 what'll happen iif we try two make iit iin one triip.

AG: F8ne!!!!!!

AG: Just hurry the fuck 8p!!!!!!!!

 

arachnidsGrip closed the memo

 

I looked over where Sollux had gone to sit down and found him rubbing his temples. I could relate, talking to Vriska was a handful, even when the situation isn’t a fucking nightmare.

“Come on, we better get ready to enter this shitshow,” I said, rubbing my own temples.

 

Flying, as it turns out, is an interesting experience.

After a yelling fit, a few thousand curses, and Sollux laughing his ass off at me as he picked me off the ground, we were flying toward Terezi’s hive, which was naturally the farthest landdwelling hive out of our entire friend group. Feferi’s was the furthest out out of everyones, but her hive was underwater.

We flew past Principium faster than I could ever run, but not as fast as, say, one of the Empress’ ships. We were still going by really fast, and looking down was making my nauseous from the fear that he’d drop me.

“Stop looking at the ground KK,” Sollux tapped my head, his hands sparking from the psionics keeping us from _dying_. “You’ll probably throw up or something and I’m not dealing with that.”

I looked over at him to find him looking at _me_ with an eyebrow raised. He looked completely normal despite us flying thousands of feet off the ground. This isn’t surprising, seeing as this is how he gets around when he has to travel long distances for whatever reason.

I nodded slowly and he gave an unexpected soft look, “Just look at me if you have to, you look like you’re gonna be sick if you keep looking at the ground.”

I nodded again, “Probably, we’re too fucking high up for me to keep looking down.”

“Exactly.”

He turned his head to look ahead again and I kept looking at him as a balance. It was working. We were horizontal so we’d move faster, which made it kind of a weird angle to look ahead and looking to the side wasn’t much better, but it was almost grounding to look at him and how confident he was in his abilities. Fuck that was a pun wasn’t it?

He looked back over at me after we passed another settlement, “So what’s your plan?”

I gave him a puzzled look, “What plan?”

“The whole, ‘Save all trolls’ thing,” he deadpanned, giving me a completely dead look to top it off.

I shut my eyes for a second, exhaling slowly before opening them again, “Honestly? I have no idea. You, Gamzee, and Nepeta are the only ones who know anything about it, and I swore all of you to secrecy.”

He nodded, looking ahead again, “You’re going to have to come up with something, otherwise nothing will get done.”

“I know,” I muttered. We flew in silence again for awhile longer, and I looked to my left, away from Sollux, to see the sun beginning to rise.

Looking back to the psionic, I opened my mouth to ask where we were staying for the night when he turned his head back to me and said, “We’re going to stay at Tavros’ hive for the day, I got ahold of him before we left.”

I nodded, “Okay, how far out are we? Because if you hadn’t noticed the sun is rising.”

Sollux rolled his eyes, “I’m aware, and I can see it from here. We’re almost there.”

I turned my head to look forward and saw the blue windmill on top of a hive not much taller than mine not far from a cliff’s edge approaching at a pretty fast pace. Sooner than I would have thought, we landed softly on the ground in front of Tavros’ hive.

I did not stumble over to the side of the building and vomit, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I did no such thing and Sollux did not stand there laughing at me I swear.

Okay maybe that’s what happened, but I will never admit it out loud.

Sollux knocked on the door when I stumbled back over, wiping my mouth on the bottom of my cloak. Before Tavros could reach the door, Sollux looked at me, a serious expression on his face, “I suggest starting on recruiting everyone, all of our friends. Once we’re all on the same page, we can figure out what to do from there.”

I nodded solemnly as Tavros opened the door, “Oh, hey guys. Come on in, I was just, uh, cleaning a bit. I, um, have piles of snuggleplanes and old clothes you can sleep in. I don’t have an extra ‘coon.”

He waved us in and we followed. I looked around and found it was pretty clean save some Fiduspawn stuff under a table and in corners. We followed him up into his respiteblock, which looked the same as the rest cleanliness-wise, but had more stuff in it. His recreationblock only had a table, a couch, and a screen for game grubs. It was obvious that the bronzeblood spent all his time in his respiteblock, where there was a desk with a husktop, a recouperacoon, posters everywhere, and another table that had Fiduspawn cards and stuff all over it. There were also two piles of snuggleplanes and old clothes, just as Tavros had said.

“Uh, sorry about the mess. I wasn’t done cleaning in here,” Tavros mumbled, scratching the back of his head.

I shook my head as Sollux spoke, “It’s fine, thanks for letting us crash here.”

“Yeah no problem.”

I spoke up next, “I should mention that I’ve been having nightmares that even sopor can’t ease, so if you hear me screaming that’s why.”

Tavros stared at me for a moment before blinking and saying, “That bad?”

I nodded and shrugged before turning and dropping onto one of the piles. It was right next to the one for Sollux, who curled up into it not long after.

That was the first day in a long time that I didn’t wake up once, and I have no idea why.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my God I'm so sorry this took so long, I was hoping to have another chapter written before I posted this one but I haven't had a whole lot of time to just sit and write and I feel bad so here's this one!!!

I woke to find both of the other trolls missing from where they had been sleeping the day prior, but heard them talking downstairs in the mealblock. I sat up, rubbing my head around the hornbeds, and yawned. I felt more well rested than I had in nights, and I was skeptical as to how I slept so well. The only difference between when I was waking up every hour screaming and when I started sleeping better was the yellowblooded bulgefucker that I had made stay in my hive.

I was so pale for the troll that his presence was making me sleep better, go figure.

I made my way down into the mealblock and saw that Tavros was stirring grubcake batter and Sollux was leaning against the thermal hull.

“…need to get to Terezi’s hive as soon as possible, VK said that it was completely empty and she’s been missing for at least two weeks,” Sollux lisped, adjusting his feet to better hold himself up against the thermal hull.

Tavros looked concerned for a moment before turning his head to look at me as I walked in, “Um, good evening!”

I yawned again and waved a hand dismissively at him, walking over to lean against the counter, “Evening, now how much has Captor told you?”

Tavros blinked and sagged a little, “He was telling me about Aradia and everything surrounding her death, and was starting to tell me about what happened with Terezi.”

I sighed, “Yeah it’s one giant train wreck. With Terezi, she gave me this cryptic ass message and then vanished and hasn’t been heard from by anyone since.”

Tavros nodded slowly, “What do you mean by, uh, cryptic?”

“’I am here with a warning. Depending on the choices you make, you will either doom all of us, or you will save us all.’” I quoted. “That is word for word what she told me.”

Sollux and Tavros exchanged a look before looking at me. Sollux spoke first, “Do you think that ties into what AA was saying?”

I shrugged, “Who knows. Then I took a lovely fucking stroll through the woods near my hive and came across a feral troll, ceruleanblood, who told me, ‘They always said that he would come to finish his ancestor’s work, and they were right.’”

Sollux’s eyes went as wide as the moons behind his bi-colored lenses, “That’s basically exactly what Aradia was saying!”

Tavros, looking distressed, shakily asked, “Can you guys, um, care to, uh, elaborate?”

Sollux looked to me for permission, to which I nodded, and turned to Tavros, “Before Aradia disappeared, and died, she said to me that someone with candy red blood would return to finish his ancestor’s work. We’re pretty sure that troll is Karkat.”

I shifted uncomfortably, I didn’t like telling anyone my blood color. It would easily get me culled and I happened to like living. However, with my goals in mind, I could very end up dead anyway.

Tavros went from distressed to confused, “Candy red blood? Karkat don’t you have burgundy blood?”

I shook my head slowly, “Officially yes, but I actually have bright red, mutant blood. If anyone found out and called the drones on me I’d be dead in less than a terrified squeakbeast’s heartbeat.”

His eyes were wide and unblinking in shock, and I shifted uncomfortably for a second before growling, “Quit fucking staring!”

Tavros jumped and Sollux snorted with an attempt to hide his amusement. Tavros collected himself from looking like he was going to piss himself slowly, but before he could talk, I spoke up again, “Remember what I was saying about the caste system being stupid?”

He nodded slowly, shifting uncomfortably. I continued, “Well, I want to do away with it. Gather up as many people as possible and tear it all down. Will you join me?”

A tense silence fell. Sollux looked like he was about ready to jump to my defense if needed, even though we both knew that Tavros was a threat to precisely no one, and said troll looked pale.

I exchanged a look with the yellowblood before looking back at the bronzeblood. I watched as Tavros inhaled and opened his mouth to speak, only to close it again. Eventually he opened his mouth and stuttered, “I-I-I think I’m go-o-o-o-nna have to think about tha-a-t, I won’t, uh, um, well, tell anyone about-t-t-t it, but, uh, I’m going to think on, um, the idea.”

I rubbed my temples, “Fine, just don’t message me about it, set up a time for us to meet with you and tell me your decision. The last thing we need is a data trail someone could find.”

He nodded shakily before turning to continue mixing the grubcake batter.

 

We left mid-evening to head toward Terezi’s hive. Flying wasn’t as terrifying this time, but I still wished there was a fast way to get there on the ground.

The landscape below spread out below us and I could see expanses of trees and fields under the clouds with the occasional settlement full of grey and brown buildings. Petram, the major settlement closest to Tavros’ hive, was disappearing into the distance behind us as we sped away from it. It’s tall buildings and hivestems vanishing as we went through clouds and left it behind.

Now that I wasn’t as distracted by being utterly terrified, I watched the landscape go by and was amazed at how beautiful it was. It was a beautiful world I guess when you look at it from above. The people in it were fucking assholes and society needed a revolution desperately, but the landscape beneath us almost gave me more motivation in my quest. The world was a beautiful place and all trolls should be able to share it. Maybe we could fix the damage that Her Imperious Condescension has done to it.

I was still admiring the forests and a river that streamed through one when Sollux tapped me on the shoulder, “We’re almost there, see that forest up ahead?”

I looked farther ahead and saw a forest with different colored leaves than the ones I was looking at just then and nodded. Her nodded back, “That’s where Terezi lives, prepare yourself for whatever it is that we’re going to find.”

I nodded, and watched the forest get closer and closer until we were floating above it. Sollux lowered us through the purple-pink leaves until we could see Vriska sitting on a boulder near a tree with a hive strung along it’s branches. The lights were off, and it looked abandoned.

Vriska tossed one of her stupid magic eight balls up and down impatiently and called up, “It’s about time you losers got here! Terezi still hasn’t come back and I have no idea where she is!”

“Well neither do we! We’re going to have to go find her,” I yelled back.

Sollux shook his head, but his expression looked pained. A few feet from the ground he gasped in obvious pain, grabbed his head, and dropped us both onto the ground. My legs collapsed the second they connected with the ground from the sudden change from flying to standing. I crumpled to the ground and didn’t see Sollux when he cried out his pain. I pushed myself upright and saw he was on his knees, holding his head. Vriska got off her boulder and started jogging over while I scrambled to get to Sollux, frantically asking, “Are you okay?”

He shook his head through gritted teeth before relaxing and dropping a hand to support himself on the ground, his other hand still holding his head. When he didn’t speak, I yelled, “What the hell was that?!”

Vriska got over by us as I started fussing over Sollux’s weary form, sparks coming off the troll’s horns, “What the hell just happened to you?”

Sollux shoved me away weakly and turned his head to me, completely ignoring Vriska, “You know I hear the psychic screaming of the imminent dead, and that was Terezi’s voice I just heard, so both of you shut the fuck up because she’s as good as dead right now and we need to find her before she kicks it.”

I felt all the blood in my body turn into ice and the color vanish from my face. Looking up to Vriska, I saw that her face was paler than I’ve ever seen it.

“We need to find her,” Vriska spoke through gritted teeth. Her face looked more concerned than I’ve ever seen it, but that wasn’t saying much.

Helping Sollux to his feet, I looked Vriska dead in the eyes, something I didn’t like to do with highbloods, “Do you have any idea where she could have gone?”

She glared at me, “No! I haven’t! If I did I wouldn’t have needed you two idiots to come help me!”

“Both of you stop arguing!” Sollux snapped. “VK you have your vision eight-fold or whatever, can’t you use that?”

“Oh my, it’s not like I haven’t thought about that already,” Vriska snapped back. “I’ve tried. However, I think I have something that might help. It was my ancestor’s, and I found it along with her journal.”

The ceruleanblood pulled a white cueball out of her sylladex and held it out for us to see, “I can try to use my vision eight-fold on it, I didn’t think of that until now.”

“Then do it already! If you were slow enough to think of it don’t be slow as fuck to use it!” I growled.

Vriska rolled her eyes, “Sollux calm your moirail. I didn’t think of it because I never thought I’d be this desperate to find someone.”

“I’m not-”I started at the same time as Sollux tried saying, “He’s not my moi-”

“Looks like it. Now let me try this,” Vriska held out the cueball and focused on it. Her left eye started to glow slightly, more than normal troll luminescence did. She stood like that for a minute or two, but it felt like an eternity had passed before she stiffed, her eye went back to it’s normal brightness, and she dropped the cueball onto the dirt below our feet. I was doing my best to not look alarmed but hen Sollux put his hand on my shoulder I knew I wasn’t doing a good job.

She turned and pointed north of where we were standing, “She’s that way, and we need to move fast if we’re going to make it to her in time.”

Sollux shook his head, “We’re not going to get to her in time, but we need to hurry if we’re going to find her killers.”

I whipped my head to look at him and yelled, “We’re going to save her if it’s the last thing I do!”

I turned and started running in the direction that Vriska had pointed, closely followed by a flying psionic troll.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All right! I finished chapter 15 so that means I can post another chapter here! Enjoy!

At some point during my run, Sollux yanked me off the ground with his psionics and by the startled yelp that I heard come from Vriska I figure that he did the same to her. In my panic, I kept trying to run in mid-air. Captor yelled out a, “Hold still you piece of shit!” and I stilled as best as I could.

“Follow that path!” Vriska yelled. “She’s that way!”

Sollux drew both of us closer to him so he could move us all at once and not have to worry about slamming one of us into a tree or something. Logically I recognized this, that and the fact that we could only go so fast and the yellowblood still have control over the three of us, but I wanted to be ahead of them and going much, much faster.

Branches whipped me in the face as we ducked and weaved through trees and I thought my heart was going to beat it’s way through my chest. I looked over to Sollux as he shouted, “Do we have any sort of plan?”

“Find the fuckers after my moirail and kill them!?” Vriska yelled back, sounding very irritable. I didn’t blame her.

“Find them, and save her before it’s too late,” I shouted, hoping that the audible crack in my voice at the end wasn’t audible to the other two. Sollux gave me a sympathetic look before shaking his head.

“It’ll be too late Karkat, the best we can hope for is to get there before her killers escape,” he said as quiet as he could through the rushing wind.

I shook my head vigorously, “We have to try!”

He shook his head again and turned his head back forward to guide us through the trees. Up ahead I could see a clearing get closer and closer, moonlight washing the ground and wildlife into shades of blue, green, and grey.

The world slowed down the second we were close enough to see into the clearing.

Terezi stood on a branch with her back to us, and a facepaint covered purpleblood stood on the same branch, facing her. She had a noose wrapped around her neck, which was tied to the branch beneath her feet. She wasn’t fighting at all, she looked like she had an impatient posture with her arms crossed over her chest.

My eyes widened to the size of the moons as the purpleblood spotted us, and shoved Terezi over the side of the branch.

“ _No!_ ” Vriska and I shrieked at the same time. Sollux cried out, but I didn’t hear him very well through the roaring in my ears.

_We were too late._

“ _How dare you!_ ” Vriska screamed, her voice heightening in pitch. She swiftly threw her hands to her head and a small Scorpio sign appeared on her forehead. The same one appeared on Sollux’s and he dropped her, his eyes blank. Vriska landed on the ground with a roll and ran full tilt toward the tree. Sollux regained his facial expression, which was of grief, and spun the two of us to a halt in mid air. When the world stopped physically spinning, Sollux was in front of me, facing the tree. I screamed, “Let me down!”

“No!” Sollux snapped as we watched Vriska reach the tree that the purpleblood stood upon, laughing, and scaled it with practiced ease. She reached the branch, grabbed it, and swung over it and landed on her feet, cutting off the troll’s means of escape. Except when the purpleblood jumped forward and did a handspring off Vriska’s shoulders and bolted into the branches. A vengeful screech cut through the air as Vriska turned around and chased her.

“Let me down! Let me the fuck down you nookmunching computerfucker!” I shouted, struggling against nothing.

“No KK,” Sollux stated simply. “I’m not letting you down until I know this clearing is empty of trolls that’ll attack us.”

“ _I don’t care! LET ME DOWN!_ ” I screamed. If I got angry enough, maybe I wouldn’t cry.

“ _Fine!_ ” Sollux yelled and dropped me. I crumbled when it hit the grown, but got up and ran toward Terezi’s hanging frame. The irrational part of my thinkpan was yelling that there was some way of saving her, where the rational part was trying to tell it that it was too late.

We were too late.

I dropped to my knees, staring at my dead, hanging flush crush. I never told her how I felt about her, and I never would be able to.

I felt my bloodpusher slowly caving in on itself. She was dead. I should have come for her sooner, I should have made a better effort to try and find her. I should have made sure she was okay, or pushed Vriska to go find her.

I should have done _something_ and yet, I did nothing.

It took an immense effort to not dig my claws into my palms, so I dug them into the ground instead. I had this sinking feeling that this was my fault. First Aradia gave me a cryptic message and was promptly found dead, and then Terezi left me a cryptic message and was just now murdered.

She had been the most clever person I knew, one of the craziest by far, and one of the best fighters. She was beautiful inside and out, and now she hung from a branch above my head like one of her scalemates.

I made a point to not show any emotion besides anger around other trolls. I was Karkat Vantas, and I was an angry troll and nothing more. I didn’t have feelings, or so I wished. This didn’t hurt like I had been impaled, or so I wished.

I barely heard Sollux saying my name. I barely noticed him waving his hand in front of my face. I didn’t quite register that he crouched in front of me. I was too lost in the roar of guilt and grief that was threatening to take me over. We got here too late, and it was my fault she was gone. I didn’t try hard enough to find her.

I did notice, however, when he smacked me across the face, my head snapping to the side.

I whipped my head back to yell at him, but it was in that moment that my emotions decided to betray me and nothing but a choked sob broke out of my throat. Absolute sympathy broke out onto Sollux’s face, or at least I thought, it could have been there this whole time, and he pulled me into a hug. It broke the dam that was holding back all the physical signs of sorrow that I was holding in. I sobbed into his shoulder, screaming, “We were too late!”

Sollux rubbed my back, making a shooshing sound as I screamed and sobbed my grief. Terezi was gone, and there was nothing we could do about it. She was just as dead as Aradia.

It dawned on me that that’s why the hacker troll had so much sympathy, his matesprit died recently after all. He knew what I was going through, only he had to go it alone.

I rocked back and forth, swaying Sollux with me, holding onto him for dear life. After what felt like hours, I started to stop. I started feeling more and more soothed by Sollux’s hand rubbing my back, him shooshing me. It was all very pale, and it was calming me down.

When I was reduced to a hiccuping mess, I went to sit up but was held in place. “Shoosh, just sit for a moment. Are you doing any better?” Sollux asked.

I shrugged, “I guess, you’re helping.”

“Good,” he hummed, continuing to rub my back. “That was the idea.”

I rested my head back on his shoulder, still hiccuping. I didn’t say anything, and just let myself be soothed. I didn’t have it in me to cry anymore. I still felt every bit of pain, but it was more bearable.

He kept with the shooshing, and it was then did I notice I was still shaking. It was starting to stop, however, as I started feeling more and more soothed.

“This is textbook pale, I hope you know,” I muttered before I could stop myself. Shit, he was going to stop and I would be a mess again oh shit no no no-

“I know,” he muttered back. “That’s the point.”

I sagged in relief, and I heard him exhale, he must have been nervous if he was holding his breath. I was pacified through and through, and it was then that he pushed me forward to sit upright, but he held me up by the shoulders, “I wanted to return the favor for when I got to your hive and you took care of me. That was also textbook pale KK.”

I shrugged, “I couldn’t help it, it was instinctual to take care of you.”

“Same goes for me right now,” he breathed before reaching up to brush my hair from my eyes so he could look into them. “This is way too sappy for my taste though, but because it’s you I’ll let it slide. However, would you be opposed to being my moirail?”

“ _Please,”_ I will shamefully admit to gasping. He snorted and ruffled my hair with the claw that was holding my hair up, a grin on his face, “Sap.”

“Shut the fuck up,” I rolled my eyes, sitting up.

It was then that I saw Vriska coming back into the clearing covered in blood, both cerulean and purple.

One of her arms, the one covered in the most of her own blood, was hanging uselessly to the side. Blood drained from it and left a trail in her wake. Her other hand was pressed against the eye on the same side as her useless arm. More cerulean blood drained from it, leaving half of her face running with blood. The same hand had purple blood splattered on it, and so did her clothes. As she approached, Sollux and I scrambled to our feet and the yellowblood turned to face her. Her torso heaved from the strain of breathing, battle, and injury, and she stumbled before getting to us.

“The… fucker who shoved her… is dead… but not before I beat information… out of her,” Vriska wheezed. She stumbled to a stop a few feet from us, panting. “The purpleblood was part of a group of others of the same cult or something stupid like that.”

She coughed and spat blood to the side with her face twisted in a snarl, “She told me that Terezi didn’t even put up a fight, and just said that she knew they were after her, and that she’ll ‘go willingly in order to give the others a fighting chance.’”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean!?” I shouted. Vriska shook her head and shrugged the best she could with the shoulder that could move. By the way her one arm was hanging, she couldn’t move it if she tried.

“I don’t know what it’s supposed to mean Karkat!” she shouted back, her voice sounding funny. “All I know is that my moirail, the one who wouldn’t back down to anyone and chased me around in circles with her mind games didn’t put up a fight against the _fuckers_ that killed her!”

Her voice slowly filled with more sorrow as she yelled, and the bitchy exterior she put up was slowly cracking as grief started to seep through her features. At the end of her words, her voice cracked into a sob. She tried to cough to cover it up, but we all knew it happened. She’d probably claim it was blood, but there was a stream of cerulean coming from her good eye.

I looked at Sollux for a moment and he nodded. We both knew we had to tell her what was going on.

“I think I know what she was talking about, what Terezi was talking about,” I started, coughing to clear my throat. Sollux’s head turned slightly to give me a side glance that I couldn’t read as I stood up straighter, “She told me something creepy and cryptic before she disappeared. Aradia did the same before she died.”

Vriska’s eye narrowed, “I’m listening.”

I ran a hand through my hair and looked her dead in the eye. Everything on the inside was screaming to not make eye contact, but I was about to tell her everything anyway so what did it matter if she say the candy red starting to fill in my irises?

“Terezi told me that my choices will either doom us, or save us, and then Aradia said I would be the turning point in our society. Neither were heard from after they gave those messages. I was also given some weird message from a ceruleanblood in the forest near my hive about someone coming back to finish his ancestor’s work. He was standing over some cuffs that turned out to look like my sign,” I gestured to my shirt. “After getting back to my hive, Sollux told me that Aradia was dead.”

Sollux spoke up next, “She had told me that someone with candy red blood would cause a big change.”

Vriska looked puzzled for a moment before her eye widened. She narrowed it again, staring me dead in the eyes, “When did your eyes start filling in Vantas? I didn’t notice the bright red before.”

I felt my skin crawl under her gaze, but mine did not waver, “Around the time Aradia gave me her message. We think that all Aradia was talking about me, and Terezi was saying something about my decisions being important, so I’ve decided to take all this rage I have and put it to good use.”

My voice dropped in volume, a feat considering I was not a quiet troll, “I’m going to tear this society down, and bring down the ones who killed our friends.”

“I’m joining you,” Vriska’s stated forcefully. “This society is what fucked me up, and is the reason that my moirail is dead.”

She straightened up, her good hand dropping from her face to allow the blood to flow freely along with I speculate were tears, “I will find the one who ordered Terezi’s death and hand-feed them to my lusus in sixty-four pieces.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shout out to SirriusTheMoonblade for commenting and reading every chapter, you are amazing <3  
> I hope you guys enjoy this chapter, it's not as intense but it's still important!

Normally trolls don’t bury their dead, but for some reason I felt the need to bury her. Vriska was too out of it to argue, and Sollux didn’t fight me on it. I didn’t want scavengers to pick apart her body and soak the ground teal. I didn’t want to think about how her beautiful form would look torn to shreds, so I decided that we were going to bury her.

By the time Sollux dug a deep enough hole with his psionics for us to lower her into the ground, Vriska was nearly unconscious form blood loss. I had been trying my best to get the bleeding to stop in her arm, but it wasn’t stopping. We all knew she was probably going to have to lose the arm, there was no saving it.

I buried her myself though, shoving the mounds of dirt that Sollux piled up next to the grave on top of Terezi’s still form. The bullshit story that the dead look like they’re sleeping is just that, bullshit. She didn’t look asleep, she looked dead. She was too still and her skin was closer to a sickly tealish-white than grey.

I was crying again by the time that I finished burying her, tears that betrayed my blood color running along my face and dripping onto the ground. I dried my eyes and face before turning to face Sollux, who was helping a half conscious Vriska stay sitting upright on the ground.

Sollux looked up from where he was inspecting some of her wounds on her left arm to inspect my expression, “We should get her back to her hive, and probably call on Kanaya to help with her arm.”

I nodded, mumbling, “She’s gonna have to have it amputated before it gets infected, if she doesn’t bleed out first.”

“You’re doing _what_ to my arm?” Vriska slurred. “It’s fine I promise, just a flesh wound!”

“Vriska, you can’t move it even when you try because your injuries are so deep that it’s probably damaged your nerves! It’s just going to get infected and you’ll lose it then anyway, if it doesn’t kill you,” Sollux snapped, turning his head to glare at her.

Vriska’s next words were unintelligible due to her losing consciousness for a moment, and instead of asking her to repeat herself Sollux looked back over at me with a tired expression, “We should get going.”

“Let me get ahold of Kanaya first,” I mumbled, pulling my palmhusk out of my sylladex after a few tries. Why did I put it in the stupid thing in the sylladex first place? It’s almost impossible to get shit out of it.

 

—carcinoGeneticist began trolling grimAuxiliatrix—

 

CG: I KNOW I HAVEN’T THOUGHT TO TALK TO YOU IN A PERIGEE,

CG: BUT WE HAVE A SETTLEMENT SIZED PROBLEM HERE.

GA: It Truly Has Been Awhile Karkat

GA: What Manner Of Problem Brought You To Think Of Trolling Me Instead Of One Of Our Other Friends

CG: THE MANNER OF PROBLEM INVOLVES THE NEED TO SAW OFF SERKET’S LEFT ARM

CG: I CAN EXPLAIN MORE IN PERSON, BUT SHE’S PROBABLY GOING TO GET AN EXTREME FUCKING INFECTION IF IT’S NOT DEALT WITH QUICKLY.

CG: AND AS MUCH AS I CAN CARE LESS ABOUT THE BROAD, TEREZI WOULD HAVE HAD ME HANGED IF ANYTHING HAPPENED TO HER.

GA: Would Have

GA: Why Are You Speaking As If She Can’t Harm You

GA: When We Both Know She Has Her Ways

CG: BECAUSE SHE’S DEAD KANAYA.

CG: HUNG LIKE ONE OF HER FUCKING SCALEMATES FROM A TREE.

GA: Oh

GA: I Was Not Expecting That

GA: There Has Got To Be An Interesting Explanation For This

GA: Where Do You Want To Meet

CG: VRISKA’S HIVE, WE FIGURED WE’D GO THERE FIRST.

GA: Who Else Is With You

CG: SOLLUX.

CG: WE’RE GOING TO START TREKKING OVER TO HER HIVE AND HOPE THAT WE DON’T GET DEVOURED LIKE SNACKS BY HER LUSUS.

CG: SHE’S ALMOST UNCONSCIOUS FROM BLOOD LOSS AND WE NEED TO GET HER SOMEWHERE THAT ISN’T THE MIDDLE OF TEREZI’S WEIRD, CONVOLUTED FOREST.

CG: WE’LL MEET YOU THERE.

 

—carcinoGeneticist ceased trolling grimAuxiliatrix—

 

I captchalogued my palmhusk again and sighed, “Let’s go.”

 

 

The flight to Vriska’s hive was quiet, save for when Vriska would give us slurred directions that we didn’t need. Sollux had been to Equius’ hive a few times to aid him with some programming, and she lived right next to him so Sollux already knew where he was taking us.

The woods below us had long ago thinned out into fields and the fields died out into a rocky landscape. There were patches of trees here and there, but most of the land was nothing but stone and dry, hard soil.

In the distance stood two dark, tall hives, stood on the horizon. One of the hives stood on a pillar of rock broken away from the mainland, and the other stood tall along the edge of the cliff. As we drew closer, I saw that there was no water below the hives, only a canyon full of rocks and sand. From our position, which was still several miles away, I couldn’t even tell how one got to the further hive. That one belonged to Equius if memory served, and it’s not like he could _fly_ or anything like certain hacker trolls in the vicinity.

Once we were descending in front of Vriska’s hive did I notice the thin bridge that strung between the cliff and the pillar of stone that held up Equius’ hive. Without looking too far down, I could see long, thick tendrils of spider silk stuck to stone and strung downward. I didn’t gaze at them too long seeing as the sight made my skin crawl, and instead looked over at the ground as we landed.

I managed to grab Vriska before she collapsed onto the ground. Her skin was colder than normal ceruleanblood cold, and she was extremely pale. Most of her bleeding had slowed, but hadn’t stopped. She was going to die if Kanaya didn’t get here soon to stitch her up.

Sollux, looking drained, no doubt from all the psionic energy he’s had to exert, helped balance Vriska on her feet so she could attempt to walk into her own hive, “Come on, let’s get her inside.”

I nodded, hooking her good arm over my shoulders. Vriska grumbled something about the key to the front door that I didn’t understand. I looked over at Sollux, who gave me a confused look. He didn’t understand either.

“What did you say?” I asked, tilting my head to actually look her in the face.

“My key is around my neck,” she said a little louder. “You’ll need it to get inside you idiot.”

I rolled my eyes and moved the collar of her shirt to the side enough to find a chain. I pulled it, and the key that was attached, out of her shirt and unclipped it from around the ceruleanblood’s neck.

Her eyes fluttered shut and she went limp as I unlocked the door, causing Sollux to grunt from the sudden deadweight. I shoved the key in my pocket and swung around to catch her before she dragged the hacker troll to the ground with her. Her eyes blinked open slightly again a moment or two later, “’M okay.”

“No you’re not,” I growled as I helped Sollux pull her upright. “Where is your respiteblock?”

“Top floor.”

I internally smashed my head into the wall. Of course it was on the top floor, _of course_ _it was._

At least twenty minutes of trying to drag a half conscious Serket up the stairs later, we cleared a space on the floor and covered it in snuggleplanes and any clothing we could find. I wrapped her arm in a towel and applied pressure to the worst of the damage. By the time that we got her situated, Vriska was completely unconscious.

I was pulling down the blackout curtains for the windows when Sollux tapped me on the shoulder, causing me to jump and whirl around to face him. He held his hands up non-aggressively, “Hey, was just going to tell you to go get some sleep. I’ll keep watch for Kanaya.”

A yawn interrupted my attempt at protesting, and before I could attempt to speak Sollux simply narrowed his eyes slightly at me, “Seriously, go to sleep.”

I grumbled at him, but didn’t argue. Exhaustion was dragging at my limbs now that the adrenaline had worn off. Vriska was still bleeding to death, but we had her as wrapped up as best as we could until Kanaya could stitch her up. There was no reason for me to continue being awake, so I dragged more soft things into a pile not far from where Vriska was laying, curled up on it, and fell asleep.

 

_The trees towered for what seemed like miles overhead. The moonlight had washed all the colors away, leaving nothing but silver and grey. I was staring straight to the sky, but couldn’t see past the branches and leaves._

_I started to lower my head as the wind picked up, and when my head leveled with the ground I found myself looking directly at Terezi Pyrope._

_Her eyes were a bright white behind red lenses, and her face betrayed no emotion. Her usual teasing grin that she gave me was not there, and she stood like she didn’t know me at all._

_The wind whipped through her hair, and her body swayed with the wind for a moment before staying still again. I tried to step toward her, but found that I could not move. I tried to call out to her, but my mouth would not open._

_Out of the trees came hooded figures with tall, spindly horns and white painted faces. They wore various designs of black, grey, white, and purpleblood purple, and the slunk from behind several trees. Logically, there was probably only eight of them, but it seemed like they came from everywhere._

_Terezi still didn’t move, but recognition seemed to cross her dead expression at last as she realized that I was also standing there. She blinked, and a sorrowful grin tugged at the corners of her lips. The purplebloods were coming toward her, and one of them drew a noose out of their sylladex._

_My eyes widened, but that’s the most movement that I could manage. I couldn’t call out to her to warn her of the trolls that were coming up behind her, but something in the back of my thinkpan told me that she already knew they were there. She may have been blind, but her senses were sharper than anyone I’d ever met._

_The troll with the noose reached the tealblood and wasted no time in looping the noose around her neck and tightening it. Terezi didn’t even look surprised, she simply shut her eyes in resignation. The troll knocked Terezi’s feet out from under her and started dragging her toward the tree._

_This wasn’t like her at all. Terezi was a fighter damnit! She would never just let someone kill her!_

_“Terezi!” I managed to finally cry out as the troll hung her from the tree, the audible snap of Terezi’s neck breaking echoing in the clearing as—_

 

I cried out as I threw myself into an upright position. I noticed Sollux jump from the corner of my vision, and turned my head to see him and Kanaya standing not far from the door. I blinked a few times, trying to clear the last of the daymare from my thinkpan. Rubbing the heel of my palm against a ganderbulb, I scowled. I had been hoping that I wouldn’t have had any daymares, but after tonight that was probably to be expected.

Sollux made his way around Vriska to crouch next to me. I was panting, my heart rate through the roof, when he set a hand on my shoulder, “Are you alright?”

I shrugged, “I guess. Just a daymare.”

His eyebrows furrowed, “I thought they weren’t as bad?”

“After last night? Of course my pathetic excuse for a subconscious decided to torment me some more, this was obviously going to happen Sollux.”

Sollux rolled his eyes before standing up and turning to Kanaya. She stepped around Vriska’s unconscious form toward us, but was examining the troll as she did so.

“What happened to her can come after, but we need to deal with her arm,” Kanaya stated sharply. “I ask that we leave her unconscious, not that waking her up would be an easy feat with this much blood loss.”

Sollux and I nodded, and I hauled myself to my feet. Muttering, “I’m going to the ablutionblock,” I marched out of the spider trolls respiteblock and down the hall.

I heard Kanaya start up the chainsaw as I rubbed at my face with cold water from the sink. The image of Terezi’s blank stare and the sound of her neck snapping repeated over and over in my thinkpan, but they were fading. The iceberg cold water was helping.

A moment later I heard the grisly sound of Vriska’s arm being sawed off. I was suddenly very glad I left the block, because that was probably a really gruesome sight that I had no desire to watch.

I waited a few minutes before shutting off the faucet and making my way back to the respiteblock. Before I even got to the doorway I saw a spray of cerulean splattered on the ground and the door. Stepping into the block, I first saw Kanaya stitching up Vriska’s shoulder, then Sollux standing awkwardly near one of the windows looking tired, and lastly a bloody bundle of towels around what was probably Vriska’s arm. I figured that we were going to end up throwing the arm to Serket’s lusus, who was probably due for a light snack by now. Who knows when Vriska last fed her, and I didn’t want to be the things next meal.

I stood in the doorway for a few minutes before Kanaya finished her work on the luckily still unconscious troll and turned her head to look at me, “She’ll be fine and will probably wake up in a few hours. In the meantime, you two need to get some sleep. It’s almost noon.”

Kanaya was a strange troll because she could stand the Alternian sun, but at least she wouldn’t be culled for it. It was a trait that was fairly common for the rare jadeblood caste.

Sollux spoke before I had the change to argue, “Wake us up if anything bizarre happens.”

“Will do.”

Sollux walked over, grabbed me by the wrist, and dragged me to the pile I slept in earlier, ignoring my protests in the process. He pulled me down with him when he laid down, “Sleep Vantas.”

“And if I have more daymares..?” I scowled.

“Then wake me up, I’m right here.”

I grumbled irritably, but before I could say anything else Captor had his arms wrapped around my shoulders in a vice grip and was asleep. It took me a lot less time than I thought it would to follow suit.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woo woo chapter 15! More plot building, but I promise it gets more interesting as we go!

I expected more daymares, but my sleep this time was blissfully uneventful.

Before I even opened my eyes I knew that Sollux wasn’t in the pile anymore, leaving it empty and cold. I grumbled and rolled onto my back, blinking my eyes open. I heard mumbled words from across the block, but I wasn’t conscious enough to figure out what was being said.

After a moment or two I heaved myself upright and looked around. The first troll I saw was Kanaya, who was sitting in Vriska’s desk chair sewing something light grey in color. The fabric was draped over her legs and didn’t appear to have much of a form at this angle. She had more grey fabric at her feet that was all bunched into a small pile. She was paying no attention to the block around her, simply being more interested in the project in her lap. I couldn’t figure out what she was working on, so I turned my head.

Sollux was munching on what looked like grubloaf while sitting on the floor a few feet from Vriska, who was still dead to the world. He turned his head to me as he swallowed what he had in his mouth, “Good, you’re finally up. It’s halfway to midnight, you’d think you hadn’t even napped.”

“Shut up Captor,” I growled, giving a glare for good measure. He simply snorted and rolled his eyes.

I turned back to Kanaya, who had stopped sewing and had looked up at me. She set aside her project on the desk and looked back over to me, “While you _both_ were out cold, Vriska and I had been discussing what had happened. She explained what you had told her as well.”

I felt my blood run colder, but only for a moment. Kanaya can be trusted. Even so, I turned my head to Vriska and narrowed my eyes at her sleeping frame, “Keep what she told you to yourself, Sollux, Nepeta, Tavros, Vriska, and I. No one else knows, and I don’t want to get fucking culled for it.”

She nodded solemnly, “I understand.”

“I’m gonna have to tell that spiderfucking bitch to shut her mouth when she wakes up again,” I growled half to myself. Sollux must have heard, because he nodded, his teeth slightly bared. I shushed him from across the block and he calmed down.

Kanaya raised an eyebrow, but said nothing about the moirailing she just witnessed. Instead, she picked up the fabric in her hand and started to sew again.

“I very much appreciate what you’re doing, and I will be assisting you,” she said clearly. “I have been doing my utmost best to avoid being dragged into the dark of the brooding caverns, as you know is customary for jadebloods after they hit nine sweeps.”

I nodded at her, but her head was still tilted downward so she could see what her deft hands were sewing. She didn’t look up when she continued, “I’ve all but moved into a new hive and live technically as a feral, which was next on my list of measures to take to avoid it. You see, I have no desire to care for the young grubs of our species or the mother grub. I wish nothing more but to be a merchant in the nearby settlement and see clothing and tailor clothes.”

She stopped her work and looked up to stare me straight into the eyes. I could see the edges of her irises around her pupils filling in a jade green color, indicating that she was also going to be discovered soon. I honestly did not blame her, and had been considering similar measures myself. I hadn’t been sure what her tactics were, but past me was an idiot for not coming to her before. If anyone would understand my situation, it would be Kanaya.

“You’re not the only one who is evading the Empress’ drones,” she said simply.

Before I could open my mouth to speak, a voice rose from Sollux’s direction, “Captor why the hell are you eating my food?”

Vriska was still on her back, but her head was turned to face my moirail with narrowed eyes. Sollux visibly bristled, “Because I need to eat in order to survive Serket.”

“But it’s my food!”

“And? Karkat and I saved your damn life. If we hadn’t gotten ahold of Kanaya and hadn’t dragged your ass to your hive you would have died alongside your moirail,” Sollux spat.

Vriska looked stunned for a second before anger crossed her features, “Like either of you would ever leave someone to die.”

“ _Enough!_ ” Kanaya yelled, rising to her feet. “Both of you will desist immediately. Sollux, go get something for Vriska to eat seeing as this is her hive and she is gravely injured, and Vriska he helped save your life, at least be a little grateful.”

Both of them grumbled, “Yes ma’am” at Kanaya, and Sollux rose to his feet to fetch Vriska food. I thought about asking for something also, as my meal sac was starting to eat itself I was so hungry, but decided against it.

They were coming across a little black there, so I wasn’t surprised that Kanaya intervened. She’s the best auspice out of our entire friend group, and she would see an unhealthy potential kismesisitude a mile away. By the look on Vriska’s face, she might be seeing spades at my moirail after all.

Needless to say, I shoved the thoughts out of my head and dug my palmhusk out of my pocket. The light just above the screen was blinking at me, and when I woke up the screen it showed I had a series of messages from Tavros.

 

 

—adiosToreador began trolling carcinoGeneticist—

 

AT: uH, kARKAT,

AT: i THINK I DECIDED ON,,, wHETHER OR NOT TO HELP YOU GUYS OUT

AT: aND I THINK I'M GOING TO, uM, hELP AS BEST AS I CAN

AT: yOU'LL NEED AS MANY PEOPLE TO HELP AS POSSIBLE RIGHT, sO I'LL HELP

 

I looked up to see Sollux holding out a nutrition plateau with some grubloaf on it for me, which I gladly took before showing him the screen of my palmhusk. He nodded before going over to hand Vriska her food. Kanaya tilted her head to the side and raised an eyebrow at me, as if to ask what had happened.

“Tavros agreed to help us,” I said simply. “He hasn’t said anything to blow us out of the metaphorical water, so at least he had the sense to censor himself.”

Kanaya nodded slowly, “It’s good that he will be helping us, we’ll need all the help we can get.”

 

CG: ALRIGHT, SOUNDS GOOD.

CG: I’LL SPEAK TO YOU MORE ABOUT THIS FUCKERY LATER IN PERSON.

CG: I’LL LET YOU KNOW WHEN WE LEAVE HERE AND START HEADING BACK YOUR WAY.

AT: oKAY,,, tHANKS

AT: uH I WILL WAIT HERE THEN

CG: GOOD

 

—carcinoGeneticist ceased trolling adiosToreador—

 

As I went to close Trollian and set my palmhusk down, another window pinged to let me know someone else was trolling me.

 

—arsenicCatnip began trolling carcinoGeneticist—

 

AC: :33 < karkitty i heard what happened

AC: :33 < equius told me that vriskers was going to n33d a new arm

AC: :33 < he said that kanaya had sent word for him, but told me that he didn't know what exactly happened

AC: :33 < what happened to vriska?

 

I looked up at Kanaya, “It’s Nepeta, she said that you sent word to Equius?”

She nodded, “I didn’t give him the specifics, partially because I didn’t know them and partially because I knew you would rather tell him yourself.”

I stared at her for a moment with narrowed eyes before nodding, “You’re right, the complaining fuck is going to need a replacement.”

Sollux zapped one of my horns and I glared at him before turning back to Kanaya, “Thank you, I guess.”

 

CG: I CAN’T TELL YOU OVER TROLLIAN.

CG: YOU KNOW WHY.

CG: UGH OKAY JUST

CG: GET HERE AS FAST AS POSSIBLE.

CG: WE CAN MEET YOU AT EQUIUS’ HIVE OR SOMETHING.

CG: WE GOTTA WAIT FOR VRISKA TO WAKE UP SOME MORE AND SHIT LIKE THAT.

CG: AND GET HER AND SOLLUX TO STOP BLACKFLIRTING

AC: :33 < blackflirting you say?

CG: FUCK

 

I groaned and fell back onto the pile. Everyone’s heads immediately snapped into my direction and Sollux was halfway out of his seat before I waved a hand at him, “You can hate me later, let me finish this conversation with her.”

 

AC: :33 < aside from that, is she doing okay?

AC: :33 < i figure that if she had to have an arm hacked off that she'd be doing pretty bad but

AC: :33 < if she's awake than that's a good sign!

CG: DEPENDS ON WHAT YOU DEFINE AS GOOD.

CG: SHE’S DOING BETTER IF THAT’S WHAT YOU MEAN.

CG: SHE’S NOT DYING FROM BLOOD LOSS AND HER RISK OF INFECTION IS LOWER.

CG: SHE DIDN’T NEED A BLOOD TRANSFUSION OR ANYTHING EITHER, WHICH WOULD HAVE BEEN DIFFICULT.

CG: CONSIDERING SHE’S THE ONLY CERULEANBLOOD IN OUR GROUP.

CG: BUT I’LL EXPLAIN MORE LATER.

 

—carcinoGeneticist ceased trolling arsenicCatnip—

 

I looked up from my palmhusk and promptly tossed it onto the otherside of the pile, rolling my ganderbulbs so hard they met the moons. Sitting upright, the first thing I see is three trolls staring at me with an eyebrow raised. I rolled my eyes again.

“I made a snide comment about blackflirting to _Nepeta_ of all trolls. I am the biggest idiot of the entire floating space rock that is Alternia, it is me,” I confessed, burying the heels of my palms against my eyes.

I heard a guttural growl from Vriska, and a groan from Sollux. They knew it was about them. I could also hear a faint chuckling from Kanaya, which was funny as fuck. I lowered my hands, snickering.

“Oh my ancestors Karkat Vantas is actually laughing about something!” Vriska snorted.

“Shut the fuck up Serket!” I growled.

There was a _zap_ sound and Vriska’s surprised yelp told me that Sollux sparked her horns or something. He does that when someone is being stupid or he wants them to do something. The psionic is not modest about his abilities at all.

Technically, pisonics are also mutuants. However, they are useful mutants. Many become nothing more than batteries for the Imperial Fleet’s warships. Supposedly, Sollux’s ancestor is, or was, the Helmsman for Her Imperious Condescension’s own warship. He was the most powerful psionic in legend, and was The Sufferer’s best friend.

Huh, ironic.

I looked over at my moirail and a pang of worry sparked through my torso. If the Drones caught wind of his abilities, which were not weak in the slightest, they would likely take him to the Fleet. We were nine sweeps old, adults, and the Drones would be starting to keep closer eyes on us.

We were also going to have to find matesprits and kismeses soon. Once our eyes were full colored we would be expected to contribute to the slurry. I shivered at the thought, I would have to become feral before then.

It occurred to me that due to my, no _our_ , mission, we were going to become feral anyway. My shoulders sagged slightly with relief as Vriska and Sollux bantered back and forth as Kanaya watched. If anything good came with this, it would be that we would be almost safe from the Imperial Drones as long as we stayed away from the settlements.

We would be safe, for the most part.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my God I'm so sorry I haven't updated, life has been kicking me these last few months and I haven't had the time to write let alone post anything. I'm almost done with Chapter 19 though, so I should be updating more. Enjoy guys!

“Why in the hell don’t you just have the psionic carry me over there?”  
Vriska, for once, had a valid point. Why weren’t we?  
Because Sollux was still pretty burnt out from the other night. After not taking care of himself since Aradia died he was weakened anyway, and then all the flying we did on top of everything with Terezi’s death, he was exhausted. I was surprised he didn’t sleep more, and as soon as we settled at Equius’ hive I was going to force the hacker troll to sleep. He was still not sleeping right.  
In fact, aforementioned troll looked dead on his feet. Kanaya and I were helping Vriska walk to the bridge that connected Equius’ hive to the mainland, but getting her across was going to be a challenge. The bridge was not wide enough to have two trolls side by side let alone three. Sollux, who walked ahead of us with his feet dragging across the stone beneath us and his shoulders slumped, was going to lead us across in case the bridge gave way. He would be able to catch us and fly us to safe ground before we became lunch for Vriska’s lusus, but he could not move us much farther. He looked like the dead come to life, and he needed to sleep.  
I hadn’t been the only one to notice. Kanaya had insisted Sollux slept when I did the following day, but he stubbornly refused until I grabbed him by the collar and dragged him into the pile with me. He passed out almost instantly.  
That didn’t mean he didn’t wake up several times Kanaya informed me, being the only one who could withstand the sunlight and able to stay up at all hours.  
She told me that he would wake up and check to see if I was still breathing before pulling me to him and falling asleep again. It made me wonder how long Captor had been seeing diamonds at me, or if he was just worried about my safety after everything.  
We reached the bridge and decided that I would cross behind Sollux, and Kanaya would hold Vriska upright from behind. This was decided before we left, but when I looked down, all the blood left my face.  
Maybe Vriska should be the one to go first.  
Spider silk stuck to the canyon walls and only go thicker as it went down. At the bottom there was a huge web that held up a _giant_ white spider lusus. The lusus was at least twice the size of my hive at the very least.  
In the web were small forms that were wrapped in the silk. The horns that stuck out of them gave away that they were _trolls_.  
I knew Vriska’s lusus ate trolls, but it only then occurred to me that those trolls might still be alive.  
“Do you see why I couldn’t just leave to look for her yet?” Vriska’s voice, quiet for once, rose up from behind me. “I had to make sure she was fed. It’s really hard to find trolls that I can sacrifice to her, but I have to otherwise she would leave her web and start eating any troll she could find, including me.”  
I turned to her and her face looked almost as pale as it had when she was dying from blood loss. Was that fear I saw in her slowly coloring eyes?  
I didn’t say anything and turned to walk onto the bridge behind Sollux.  
We walked across the bridge in silence. The bridge creaked as we stepped across it, but it stayed stable. It was silver colored with a solid railing. Something told me that this was made my Equius so it would withstand the elements and stay solid for him to walk across. He was no small troll.  
Just as Sollux crossed the threshold onto solid ground a pansplitted shriek broke through the air from beneath us. Vriska promptly yelled, “ _Move_!”  
None of us wasted any time getting off the bridge. I looked back to see Vriska’s lusus tear into one of the bundles on the web and tear it apart. The blood was yellow.  
My breathing hitched and I felt a hand grab me by the cloak and yank backward, choking me momentarily in the process.   
“Come on!” Sollux hissed, dragging me away from the bridge and toward the hive that towered over us. I stared in horror as yellow stained the web and the wall next where the troll had been seconds ago.  
My mind flashed back to the troll in the alleyway and it was all I could see for a moment.  
I didn’t realize we had gotten to the stairs that led up to the front entryway until Sollux started prodding at my cheekbones and my vision returned to me. He had dark circles under his eyes and a worried expression, “Are you okay?”  
I stared at him for a moment before nodding, “Yeah, just remembered something terrible is all.”  
He nodded slowly, his eyes still darting around to make sure my face was in tact at least. We both looked up and over by the door when it cracked open and Nepeta’s head popped out, “Come on! You guys should have been inside by now!”  
Vriska motioned with her head toward the cat troll, “She’s right, we need to get inside.”  
Sollux helped me to my feet and we all shuffled inside, half carrying Vriska in the process. She was looking very tired of having to be helped in order to move, but she’s not able to move on her own very much so she can shove it for the time being.  
Nepeta shut the door behind us and bolted a deadlock shut. A metal pane slide down over it from the ceiling and a robotic voice stated, “Defenses active.”  
“What the nookchaffing fuck?” I asked “politely.”   
Nepeta snorted, “Equius is purraniod so he has an entire defense system for his hive, but come Spidermom’s feeding time it’s pretty handy.”  
Vriska waved her good hand dismissively, “He offered to install one for my hive in some measure of ‘goodwill’ but I don’t think I necessarily need to have a defense system against my own lusus. Not unless I stop feeding her or something stupid like that.”  
Nepeta snickered and gestured us forward with a wave of her arm, “Come on, let’s go find my grumpy moirail. He should be in his workblock.”  
Kanaya threw Vriska’s arm over her shoulder again and started aiding her as we followed Nepeta through the hive to a flight of stairs, which was a bitch getting Vriska down. I’m not sure why Kanaya wanted me to aid her before, she seems to be perfectly fine half carrying Vriska herself. She was a little off balance, but it’s not like she didn’t have the strength for it.  
We reached the sub-level hallways that Nepeta navigated with total ease. I reminded myself that her and Equius have been moirails for sweeps, so she probably knows his hive inside and out by now.  
Eventually we found ourselves outside a door that had metallic musclebeasts on either side on standing on their hind hooves. I stared at them for a moment before averting my gaze and deciding to never do that again.  
“I’m not going to ask why he has those monstrosities,” I groan as Nepeta pounds on the door. Sollux snorts from somewhere behind me in the narrow hallway.  
There was a loud short alarm sound that caused us all to jump before the door slid open and Nepeta marched inside. Kanaya followed suit, mostly dragging an exhausted Vriska.   
I realized I still had my hood up and was in the process of pulling it off when I almost walked into a robot. I stopped just short of it and stared at it in it’s red lensed eyes. It had a large dent in the side of its head, and one of the horns was ripped off, the wiring still sparking.   
I stepped around it and kept moving toward our group’s destination: a workbench on the far end of the block that had a troll hunched over it with some tool that was causing sparks to come off the prosthetic he was working on.   
The troll sat upright and turned on the bench to face his moirail, whom had finally reached him. He stood up and she hugged him so hard that if it were any other troll she probably would have crushed them.  
Equius Zahhak is no small troll though, nor is he the type that would be crushed by any troll let alone his semi-feral moirail. To be fair, Nepeta could probably crush half our group if she wanted to. Maybe not Kanaya, whom is slim but could break a limb without thinking. She has to be hiding all that muscle _somewhere_.  
Equius turned to the rest of us and nodded at Vriska before looking over at me, “Vantas, I know you are involved in this, but I will expect an explanation after I fit Vriska with a new arm. She looks horrendous.”  
Vriska halfheatedly glares at him, “Pff, shove off! At least I shower regularly.”  
Ignoring her, the large troll continued, “I figure I would enlist Kanaya and Nepeta to help me with the surgery itself, seeing as they are likely the least squeamish. I am going to need to fit her with a temporary prosthetic for now, but after the initial procedure it will be an easy replacement.”  
I nodded at him and didn’t argue on the squeamish part. Kanaya is completely unfazed by blood and Nepeta paints her walls with it. He was right.  
“Please tell me you’re going to knock me out for this? I wasn’t awake for Kanaya’s amputation,” Vriska drawled. “I don’t feel like feeling my skin and nerves get all ripped apart and sewn with wires.”  
Equius turned to his neighbor, “I have anesthetic if that is what you’re asking.”  
“Good,” Vriska’s chest heaved with relief.   
Equius waved Nepeta and Kanaya toward another set of doors, “Come, we must have haste. This procedure takes hours and I wish to have it finished before dawn.”  
Nepeta and Kanaya both nodded solemnly and helped Vriska through the set of doors that Equius had motioned toward. Before following them, Equius looked over his shoulder at Sollux and I, “You are welcome to remain in my workblock, but _do not touch anything_.”  
“Yeah, didn’t plan on it,” I mumbled.  
The large troll followed the girls into the block next to this one, leaving Sollux and I to stand in silence in the middle of this one. I looked at Sollux out of the corner of my ganderbulbs and found him rubbing his eyes. He still looked exhausted.  
I looked around to try and find something that would be suitable to create a pile with before remembering Equius’ instruction to not touch anything and scowled. I didn’t realize Sollux had been looking at me when he asked, “What’s wrong?”  
I gave him an irritated look, “I was looking for stuff to make a pile with, but remembered that Equius didn’t want us touching anything.”  
He furrowed his eyebrows, “Are you tired?”  
I glared, “No, but you are.”  
He facepalmed, “I’m fine KK, I told you this already.”  
“Don’t give me that horsebeast shit, you look like the walking dead right now,” I growled. Overprotective moirail, that was me.  
If I could see Sollux rolls his eyes I know I would have, “I’m fine, I’ll sleep today.”  
I glared at him for another few moments before sighing and shutting my eyes, “Fine, but believe me when I say I’ll be okay while we sleep. If anything happens you’ll be right there.”  
A conflicted look crossed his features for a moment before he sighed as well, “If you say so, and if you turn out to be wrong I’ll punch you into the next sweep.”  
“No you won’t.”  
“Argh, you’re right.”  
I smirked at him and he rolled his eyes again, or at least I’m sure he did.  
“Now, what are we going to do for the next several hours?” I asked, looking around.  
Sollux gestured to the bench in front of Equius’s table that he had been sitting on earlier, “Well, we could sit on his work bench, I had a question for you anyway.”  
My bloodpusher skipped a beat, as it always did when someone wanted to question me. We sat down, and Sollux essentially was straddling the bench so he could look straight at me, unblinking. I turned and did the same to him, only not making direct eye contact.  
“So, how do you plan on doing any of this?” Sollux asked, his gaze unwavering. “This whole, change the world thing.”  
I was expecting this to come up eventually, and the honest answer was, “Honestly? I have very little ideas. I was thinking a bit along the lines of doing what the Signless did, only a little more cautious so we don’t get caught like him and his group did.  
“Plus, I want to recruit all of our friends. That way, we have a bigger group to keep watch and to spread the word. I also want to go from settlement to settlement and hear lowblood concerns and ideas, hear their plights. If we bring enough trolls together, we could take on Her Imperious Condescension in her capital city even.”  
Sollux nodded as I spoke, never once looking away. I kept going, inspiration and ideas coming together as I spoke, “We could spread out once we get to the settlements, talking about our mission in hushed tones in lowblood areas. Spread the word, and bring people together outside the settlement or somewhere secluded so we could talk to them all at once.”  
As I finished speaking, Sollux gave a thoughtful hum before nodding, “Sounds like a good idea to me. We should talk to the others about it of course, and hopefully Vriska will listen to you.”  
I snorted, “I will make the bag of spiders listen.”  
Sollux laughed for a moment, “Good luck.”  
We sat there for a few hours, mumbling about ideas. Eventually, Sollux ended up too tired to continue. I shifted position and turned around my moirail and had him rest his head on my lap. He passed out in seconds.  
An hour or two later, the other three of our group walked through the double doors they had left in more or less covered in cerulean. Equius pulled a surgical mask off his face and walked straight up to the two of us, waking Sollux up, “The surgery was a success, and I will need a night or two to finish this prosthetic for her.”  
The blueblood gestured to the prosthetic on the table, which I hadn’t even acknowledged the entire time we had been sitting here.  
“Now,” he began. “I want to know what had happened for my neighbor to lose her arm and her eye.”  
Sollux and I shared a look before standing up. I looked the blueblood in the eye, “You might want to sit down.”


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God I'm so sorry it's been taking me so long to update!! I've been working on Chapter 19 and now that it's finished I can post this chapter! I hope you guys enjoy!!

We decided to move into the recoveryblock that Vriska was in. She was dazed, but awake. Equius took a seat next to her bed with Nepeta at his side. She knew he was going to need her when we told him what was going on. It was a risk telling him this, but he deserved to know.

  
I shifted uncomfortably on my feet where I stood in front of the blueblood. While Nepeta was saying something to Equius, Sollux papped between my shoulder blades and shooshed me quietly, calming me down a bit. I would be lying if I didn’t say I was nervous, Equius could knock me out without a second though, if not break my skull in just one punch. Naturally, to anyone but Sollux, I would rather show that I was angry than nervous, even if I was mostly just angry at society. That, and Equius’ tendency toward elitism of highbloods.

Equius turned from his moirail to me and crossed his arms, “Now, what has transpired?”

  
I cleared my throat, “I have to go back to the assfucking beginning for this for it to make sense, but I’ll try to keep it short.”

  
Sollux, Kanaya, Nepeta, and I had decided to give him the basics first, and then go into the prophetic things later if he handles it well. My blood color would be discussed if we were 100% certain he wasn’t going to go to the drones about it.

  
“I ran into Aradia at a marketplace in Principium, the settlement nearest to my hive, and therefore was the last to see her. Next thing I know I’m getting messages from Captor here,” I jerked a thumb at the said troll. “telling me that Aradia had been killed.”

  
Equius’ eyes went wide and I somehow managed to keep my ground as he stood, anger darkening his features and his fists clenched at his sides. Sollux stepped around to stand in front of me, sparks coming off his horns. He was just as concerned as I was apparently.

“Why was I not informed of this?!” he bellowed before rounding on Nepeta, “Did you know about this?”

  
She nodded, narrowing her eyes at him, “Listen to him first and then I will explain okay?”

  
I could hear one of his teeth crack from where I stood, at least five feet from him. Equius sat back down, crossing his arms again after wiping some blood off his lip. When the roar of my own mutant blood stopped roaring in my ears and Sollux stepped aside again I continued, “I asked around to see if anyone knew. I started with Vriska, who informed me that she hadn’t heard from Terezi in awhile either. I had also not heard from her.

  
“I talked to Nepeta about it, and we went to search the cave that she had been found in and found that her body was not there. There were no trails of blood, nothing. It was just gone.  
“I talked to Sollux again about it, even though at the time he was furious at me because he thought I had something to do with it when I didn’t, and he went to check himself. He found exactly what Nepeta and I had. He ended up coming to my hive and was a complete mess. I helped him out, and a few nights later we still hadn’t heard from Terezi so I, uh, had Sollux hack into her Trollian account to see if she had even been online, which she hadn’t. She hadn’t in two weeks.

  
“Shortly after that we got thrown into a memo with Vriska, whom informed us that she had finally gotten to Terezi’s hive. She had us get out to her, which took a night and a half, and, well, Sollux collapsed with one of this psychic-screams-of-the-imminent-deceased thing, only it was Terezi’s voice he was hearing. Panicking, Vriska pulls out this cueball thing and uses her vision eightfold on it, finds her, and by the time we got to it the purpleblood behind her in the tree shoved her off,” my voice caught. “the branch and hung her like a scalemate.”

  
I inhaled and exhaled slowly for a moment before continuing, “Vriska, rightfully, flipped out, made Sollux drop her, and tore after the troll. A little bit later she came back all torn up and told us that Terezi had not fought back, but both her and the troll that killed her were both dead now. We buried Terezi and took Vriska to her hive, where Kanaya came and amputated her arm. You know what happens from there.”  
Out of what I could see through his shades, Equius had his eyes narrowed and his eyebrows furrowed, “I was not close to Miss Pyrope, but I give my sympathies to her being culled.”

  
Vriska sat bolt upright, hissing from pain, and yelled, “It was murder!” at the same time as I growled, “She hadn’t done anything wrong!”

  
Equius shook his head as Vriska fell back onto the cot, breathing heavy from the pain she was in. She started to pull herself upright again, growling, “She had told Vantas some cryptic shit before she disappeared, and then the _scumbag_ that killed her told me that she had told her that it would give us a better chance if she were to die. _She had no business being culled, she was fucking murdered!_ ”  
While she finished sitting upright, now growling from pain, I spoke up, “We think that the group of purplebloods that kill Terezi is the same group that killed Aradia.”

  
Equius sat there for a moment, the gears in his head almost visibly churning as he thought, before he turned to Nepeta and told her, “I want you to remain close to me until all this blows over. I want to make sure that you do not do anything that would cause these purplebloods to come after you.”

  
“What?! No!” Nepeta refused, standing up. “I’m going to help them figure out what all happened! Aradia and Terezi were my friends, as they were yours.”

  
“I forbid it. You will remain here until everything has blown over. I will not have you culled because you acted out. You know your caste is still heavily watched by bloobloods,” Equius growled.

  
Nepeta violently shook her head, “I don’t care! I’m not going to idly sit by while other trolls die! Karkitty has a plan, and I’m going to help him with it.”

  
Equius rises to his feet, towering over his moirail, “No, you will not. That is preposterous, you will remain here with me where it is safe, not going with the filthy rustblood and do whatever it is that he foolishly wishes to do.

  
”If you come with us than I will be with you!” Nepeta countered.

  
Equius promptly broke another tooth from the pressure in his jaw. Nepeta growled and grabbed a towel off the shelf next to her and shoved it toward him. After a moment of biting down on the small towel and staining it blue, he took the towel out of his mouth and sighed, “…you do have a point.”

  
“Yes I do!” Nepeta snapped, exasperated. Crossing her arms, she turned to face the wall, her back to her moirail.

  
Equius silently walked to the other side of Vriska’s bed, where another desk sat with Vriska’s prosthetic-in-the-making on it among several tools and small bolts and screws. He sat there for a few moments, putting pieces together. Kanaya, who had been standing by the door this whole time, stepped forward to walk to Nepeta’s side and whisper something to her I couldn’t hear. She relaxed a bit, and sighed. I turned to Sollux, who was tense but not sparking, and he looked over his shoulder at me. His jaw was tense too, but not break-your-teeth worthy tense.

  
We stood there in relative silence for what felt like sweeps. I stood there, staring at Equius’ back as he tinkered away at the prosthetic. Vriska was even silent, still sitting upright. Her jaw was clenched too, likely from the pain her eye, arm, and shoulder were in, and maybe even her back. Where her prosthetic met her shoulder had metal circling it with bolts every every inch or so. From the circle of metal were sheets of metal with lines of bolts that covered most of her shoulder, over halfway to her neck where the bandaging started at least, and I’d imagine most of her shoulder blade on that side. The metal dipped and curved along the front and over her collarbone, but I couldn’t see how low it went due to the tank top the ceruleanblood was wearing.

  
Her skin itself was bandaged for the most part, but I could see spots of cerulean on the gauze here and there. Her eye was also bandaged, with her hair falling over the gauze here for the most part. There was cerulean staining some of the gauze over her eye too.

  
I looked back over at Nepeta and Kanaya to see that most of the tension had drained out of Nepeta’s back, but her fists were still clenched. Kanaya was trying to calm her down, and mostly succeeding. Kanaya looked mostly relaxed, but not quite. Her shoulders were still a tad hunched and, which was unusually for her normal poised posture. I noticed that she had her lipstick in hand, ready to use it to manage the situation if it were to get violent, which was probably smart. Between her and Sollux there wouldn’t be a problem, and Equius would never hurt his moirail on purpose. We hadn’t told him about my disgusting mutant blood yet, so he was likely not going to try and kill me, unless he viewed me as a threat to Nepeta. So far, I don’t think he did.

  
We all stood there until Equius straightened up and, without turning around, addressed us, “I will join your group in order to keep Nepeta safe. However, I want to know the details of this operation, and I will get them from Nepeta first. Miss Leijon, if I could converse with you alone please.”

  
She sighed, “Yes.”

  
“Then the rest of you, go back into my workblock and do not touch anything.”

  
As we all turned to shuffle out, Vriska fell back against the cot again, out cold again.


End file.
